


From The Ashes

by joonfired



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - The 100 (TV) Fusion, Angst and Feels, Bellarke, Complicated Plot, F/F, F/M, Happy Ending, Kabby, M/M, Memori - Freeform, Minor Emori/John Murphy (The 100), No Smut, Non-Canonical Character Death, Original Character Death(s), Post-Canon, References to Canon, Slow Burn, The 100 Canonverse, The 100 has taken over my life, after tons of angst and feels and cliffhangers, hiatus driven, mackson - Freeform, non canon story set in canonverse, realistic characters, speculative story, steamy fluff, the 100 season 5, wicken
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-08
Updated: 2018-01-08
Packaged: 2019-03-02 12:04:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 25
Words: 40,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13317717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joonfired/pseuds/joonfired
Summary: 2,199 days have passed since Praimfaya and the world is remade.Clarke's fight is not over. After surviving the end of the world, she lives in the small community of Nightblood survivors as she waits for the return of those she loves. But Bellamy is a year late, and her hope is put to the test with an unexpected arrival.Bellamy lost Clarke in the death wave. For six years her sacrifice has given him the strength to survive, but fate has other ideas. Because the Ring, that final piece of the Ark that once again saved lives, is dying. And they have no way back to the ground.Icarus Mikeson is descended from the forgotten prisoners of the Eligius Colony. For one hundred and fifty years they've managed to survive, and now they're finally coming home. But Earth was not empty of human life, and those from the ground aren't very open to strangers.The stakes are set. The claim to Earth is once more in question. Welcome back to The 100.





	1. May We Meet Again

_1 day after Praimfaya_

Every breath hurt.

Clarke’s eyes were blistered shut, and her skin burned. She felt like she was roasting over a relentless fire, heat and pain licking at every inch of her body. Her heartbeat sounded in her ears, slow and struggling.

She had often wondered what her death would feel like. Since most of those imaginings were filled with pain, it was a relief to learn that death was the absolute absence of the trials of life. It was the final rest, and she welcomed the black that hovered at the edges of her being with open arms.

She wanted that soft, silent embrace. She wanted to let go.

Her fight was over.

But death didn’t listen to her wish – Clarke survived.

 

~ ~ ~

 

A flame of hope had been rekindled by the fact that she was still alive, and it stirred Clarke into action.

She blinked, the blisters on her eyes bursting in sharp, wet flashes of pain. The ruined skin hung in shreds across her vision, her sight blurry. Every little movement was laborious, and she whimpered at the white-hot agony that rippled across her burnt skin and stiff muscles.

She had to treat the radiation burns that covered her skin in lumpy red patches which cracked and seeped, the sensation like a thousand cuts received at once, every second. If she could get herself to the medical cabinets of Becca’s laboratory, Clarke could find something to dull her suffering, clearing her mind from its pain-induced haze.

The lights were out in the laboratory except for one flickering panel to her left, which seemed to be on the last legs of its battery connection. Silence hummed in her ears, broken only by the muttering clicks of the dying light and the harsh rasp of her breathing.

In that moment, she truly felt alone, and the weight of it loomed dark and ominous above her. But Clarke couldn’t let her emotions cripple her. She had to focus – on her recovery, figuring out what supplies she had left to her, establishing radio contact with both the bunker and the Ring.

Anything else had to wait.

 

 

_3 weeks after Praimfaya_

It was dark outside when Clarke dared to step outside the relative safety of the laboratory, the night sky tinged red from the radiation that seethed in the atmosphere, bathing the planet in death. Her breath burned in her throat and lungs, but her skin stayed smooth, touched only with the healing burns from Praimfaya. Since the laboratory doors had been breached during the death wave, the concrete cracked from the force of the storm that had raged overhead while Clarke waited for her expected death, it wasn’t like she was taking a great risk now.

The air seemed alive, wind swirling around her and sending stray strands of hair into her eyes. It was like Praimfaya had awoken something dangerous in the Earth, and Clarke couldn’t shake the sensation that she was being watched, even though she knew she was alone.

She swallowed, tasting copper from her still-healing throat, and looked up at the starless sky. Her view of the Ring was blocked by the clouds of radiation, but past the ruined atmosphere, her friends were alive.

Bellamy was alive.

Clarke couldn’t let go of that hope, no matter how many doubts assailed her. She refused to believe that their efforts had been in vain, even if her attempts at contact were met with radio silence.

“May we meet again,” Clarke told them, both a hope and a promise.


	2. Ring Of Life

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigedasleng translations in end notes.

_3 days after Praimfaya_

“ _Ark Station to the ground, this is Raven Reyes. If you are receiving, please respond._ ”

Raven knew it was probably too early to hope for contact through the thick orange cloud of radiation that blanketed the earth, turning the familiar green-and-blue planet into something alien. But that didn’t lessen the frustration that turned over in her chest, cold and heavy, when there was no response to her looped message she had set to run on every possible channel.

“Hey,” Wick said from his position at the internal systems panel, “there’s nothing more we can do but wait for a clear signal.”

“I know,” Raven muttered, closing her eyes and rubbing at her temples. “The earliest we can expect reception through the radiation is six months. Plus, the systems on this thing are either crap or dead crap, and we don’t know if we’ll have the parts to fix them, and–”

“Stop,” Wick interrupted. Raven opened her eyes as he came over and cupped her face in his hands, the scent of electrical circuits and wiring drifting to her from his fingers as he held her gaze with his steady brown eyes. “So what if this place is a fixer-upper? We’re here. We’ll get this old thing running like a dream in a few months, no problem.”

“It was failing when we left, and that was before the stress of a power drain and forced separation,” Raven pointed out, even though she felt her tension easing a little under Wick’s steady hope.

“Semantics,” he replied airily, leaning down to catch her mouth with his in a soft, reassuring kiss. “C’mon, Raven. The Ark’s best mechanic and best engineer left with nothing else to do but have sex and fix things? It’s like heaven.”

Raven shook her head at his terrible humor, but it had worked. Wick was inexplicably good at bringing her out of her funks and stirring her mind into action and, once again, she was grateful that he was here.

“What would I do without you?” she murmured, leaning her head against his shoulder.

“Oh, you’d be just fine,” Wick replied lightly, but his hold on her tightened fractionally. “I mean, you’d be deprived of my charm and awesome sense of humor, but you’d still be Raven Reyes – the badass mechanic who keeps her friends alive.”

 

~ ~ ~

 

Bellamy was glad that the Ring was in such disrepair.

He didn’t want the circular space station to fail on them, but the constant work kept him busy enough so he could ignore the pain of losing Clarke. He needed to keep moving, keep focusing on the survival of their little group. If he didn’t, Clarke’s sacrifice would have been for nothing, and he wasn’t going to let that happen.

After he left the makeshift farm section where Monty had taken up shop, tending to the starting growth of algae that would be their main food source in the coming years, Bellamy checked in with Raven and Wick in Earth Monitoring.

The room of screens and control panels was Raven’s domain. Here, the sharp-witted, loyal mechanic was queen, seconded only by Wick when it came to matters of tech. It was their combined skills that kept the Ring’s systems running. If the two of them couldn’t fix something, no one could.

“We’ve got the beacon set to loop for as long we’ve got power,” Raven told him. “If someone’s listening, they’ll hear us.”

“How’s the green coming?” Wick asked, twirling a screwdriver in one hand. “I’ve diverted our carbon dioxide to vent into there, which means we’ll be getting extra oxygen on the reverse intake. If we’ve get algae growth, we’ll have a source of natural oxygen; how’s that for nature, huh?”

“Sounds great,” Bellamy said.

Raven frowned at the tone of his voice, hearing the weariness and grief he was trying so hard to ignore. Her features clouded over with shared memories and loss.

“We miss her, too,” she said quietly.

He nodded, his jaw tightening with the reflexive gesture against the tears that lurked at the edges of his vision if he thought too much about those last hours before Praimfaya and how he had left the girl he loved to die.

“You should try to get some rest,” Wick said helpfully a few moments later. “You’re no good to anyone if you’re falling asleep on your feet.”

“I second that,” Raven added. “Our air and water is working, and food is on the way. We got this.”

 

***

 

On the way to his old quarters, the same ones he had spent the first twenty-three years of his life, Bellamy stopped by the observation window. The earth was still covered in radiation, the atmosphere dark orange with sporadic bursts of white lightning. It was a worldwide storm that he was looking at, and the most terrible thing about it was that it wasn’t the first time the earth had suffered this fate.

“ _Ste yuj_ ,” Echo said, her voice stirring him from the mild stupor he’d fallen into. “ _Wamplei nou laik eno._ ”

He glanced over at the tall, dark-eyed grounder as she walked over to him. The banished Azgeda warrior had traded her leather and furs for Skaikru clothes, a dark, long-sleeved shirt covering her tattoos and scars. The only thing of the ground about her was the fierce light in her eyes earned from a life of fighting, and the fur-topped boots she wore against the chill of space.

“Death is not the end,” she repeated in English, joining him at the window. “You will meet her again.”

Bellamy swallowed against the emotions rising thick in his throat, and took a long, deep breath. When he had imagined these five years in space, it hadn’t been without Clarke. He had refused to think about a future without her, but now he was living in one.

“Thank you for bringing me here,” Echo said a few long moments later, turning to face him. Her features looked almost soft in the dim, circadian lights set in long strips along the side of the hallways, and her voice was oddly hesitant. “I have done so little to earn your help, and yet you kept offering it to me.”

“I haven’t forgotten your actions, Echo,” Bellamy said after a moment of thought. “But there’d been enough death already, and I wasn’t going to let another one happen.”

“You won’t regret it,” Echo promised in a quick, fierce rush. She suddenly dropped to her knees, her head bent. “ _Ai sonraun laik yu sonraun._ My life belongs to you, Bellamy of Skaikru, and I will serve your people as I did my own.” She raised her head. “You are my clan now.”

Bellamy shook his head and motioned for her to stand up. “You don’t have to do this,” he told her. “I don’t care what debt you think you owe me.”

“You’re wrong,” Echo said, bowing her head once more. “I _must_ do this. You have saved my life many times, and so in return I give my complete allegiance.”

Bellamy didn’t question if she was lying or not. Echo had nothing left, which was why she had almost taken her own life back on earth. She had done terrible things in the name of her people’s safety, yes, but no one here was innocent of that.

“All right,” he agreed, extending a hand to her which she took, standing up once more. “But you were one of us the moment you stepped into that rocket. We’ve all got our pasts, Echo; what matters is if you can live with them.”

“Can you?” she asked. Her tone said that she wasn’t talking about actions, but a loss.

Clarke. Of course. Everyone knew how much she had meant to him; everyone knew how much he felt the echoes of her death.

“We can try,” he said.

Clarke had died so that he would live, and so even if going on without her felt impossible, he would honor the gift she had given him by her sacrifice.

 

_2 months after Praimfaya_

“Dinner’s up!” Monty announced, setting a plastic bin of purple algae fronds down on the metal surface of Earth Monitoring’s center console. “We’ve got established growth, so now all that we’ve got to do is keep that from getting–”

“De-established?” Wick offered with a smirk, glancing up from where he’d been poking at the wet fronds.

“Exactly,” he replied.

“So this is what we’re going to eat for five years?” Echo said, joining Wick in a feline-like inspection of the algae, curiosity and mild disgust fighting for control of her features.

“Yep,” Monty said, taking a leaf out and popping it into his mouth. It was cold and slimy, the murky taste bringing back memories of working with his parents at Farm Station’s algae vats. “This is a hybrid they came up with a hundred years ago, and while it doesn’t look like it, this is full of protein and vitamins.”

“It’ll make your bones strong,” Wick added, picking up a frond and wiggling it in Echo’s face, and the ex-grounder leaned back, disgust finally winning the battle of expressions. “Eat up!”

“God, you’re such a kid,” Raven told Wick, taking the algae away and putting it back in the bin.

“We probably won’t be living entirely off of the farms for another two years or so,” Monty said, shaking his head at Wick’s antics as he tucked the bin back under his arm, the scent of ponds and green drifting up from the harvested algae. “We can supplement our MRE’s with this to make them last, giving us a little variety for a bit.”

“Keep up the good work,” Raven said.

Monty nodded.

With the farms up and growing, a weight had been taken from his shoulders. As the only one who had worked in Farm Station, their need for sustenance was on him. Sure, Raven or Wick could have muddled by, but they had their hands full enough with the tech repair side of things.

And working in the moist air of the farm section gave Monty something to do. He was useful there, and he knew his actions were saving his friends. If saving Jasper and Harper from their path to self-destruction had been as simple as growing algae, he wouldn’t have lost both his best friend and his first love. But they had made their choice, and while he was left to deal with the loss of that decision, it wasn’t his fault.

“Murphy’s going to love me,” he called over his shoulder as he left to bring the first algae harvest to the kitchen section of the Ring.

 

~ ~ ~

 

“Oh, great – we’re saved by bacterial slime,” Murphy drawled as he inspected the algae fronds Monty had delivered a few minutes ago.

“It’s not that bad,” Emori said, popping a frond into her mouth and chewing thoughtfully. “It’s fresh.”

“Keep telling yourself that, little miss positive,” he said, shaking his head lovingly as he turned back to stirring up their daily meal of powdered protein and recycled water, flavored with a precious amount of seasoning packets. It was disgusting, but it was all they had. “We’ve got five years of it ahead of us.”

“But we’re alive, John,” Emori reminded him, slipping up and wrapping her arms around his waist. She rested her chin on his shoulder, her breath warm against his neck. “And that’s all that matters. We can live with bad food; we can’t live without it.”

“Oh, I love you so much,” Murphy said, turning around so he could kiss her.

 

 

_1 year after Praimfaya_

Bellamy was heading for his bunk after showering off from their group’s daily sparring session with Echo as the instructor, when he heard the crackle of static overhead.

It wasn’t much, just a click followed by a few pops of white noise, but that didn’t matter. What did was that this was the first bit of attempted contact they’d received since coming to the Ring, which meant someone from the ground was at a radio. Somehow, one of the Ark engineers in the Second Dawn bunker had managed to get a signal out past the slowly dissipating fog of radiation that wrapped around the entire planet.

When Bellamy dashed into Earth Monitoring a few minutes later, Raven and Wick glanced up from where they were bent over the radio.

“Yes, it’s definitely contact,” Raven said before he had the breath to ask. “It’s set on a broad spectrum that we’ve just localized to the comm speakers here” – she tapped the panel in front of her – “but I don’t know if we can boost the signal.”

“There’s still too much damn radiation between us and Earth,” Wick muttered, moving over to another panel and tapping furiously at the keyboard set in the desk below.

The sound of static intensified for a moment, barely-caught words crackling through the white noise, unrecognizable but definitely someone trying to talk to them. But then with a sharp, almost-painful pop of feedback, the noise vanished. Radio silence fell once more.

“Damn it!” Raven growled, stepping back from the comms panel with an explosive kind of movement. “We lost them . . . or they lost us. Either way, whoever it was, they were on an Ark-specific channel so it’s one of our people.”

“Which means they’ll try again?” Bellamy asked.

It had been a year since they’d spoken to anyone but those who had made it to the Ring, leaving four more years for them to figure out a way to get back to the ground. Monty was still at work trying to grow biofuel with the algae cells that had been left on the Ring, but that meant Raven and Wick would have to find some way to convert an engine that was built to run on hydrazine into one that would run on algae.

That was their only choice, and so far it hadn’t been able to work out.

“Of course they’ll try again,” Bellamy finally said, breaking the silence that had fallen after the signal had been lost. “That’s one of our people trying to contact us. They won’t give up.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Echo: Be strong. Death is not the end.
> 
> Echo: My life is your life.


	3. Bunkered Down

_3 years after Praimfaya_

Sweat dripped down Octavia’s face as she ducked and rolled away from the sweep of Kane’s sword. The once-Chancellor had learned much in their time locked away from the effects of Praimfaya, and she was pleased at the challenge he had become. Sparring with a worthy opponent was _fun_.

“Nice one,” she said with a grin, and then lunged forward with an attack of her own.

Kane grunted with effort as he brought his blade up to meet hers, the metal meeting in a harsh, unmelodic sound. His defense was strong, but Octavia twisted her sword with a subtle gesture of her wrist, slipping her weapon past his to rest on the fragile skin of his throat.

“But I still win,” she said, her grin triumphant.

Kane laughed as he stepped away, lowering his sword arm and wiping at his forehead with his free hand. The circle of trainees gathered around the sparring circle murmured in appreciation at what they’d just witnessed, but Octavia silenced them with a curt gesture.

“No matter how good you think you are,” she said, her voice ringing over the room, “always assume the other person is better. Kane thought he had the advantage, which made him careless.”

“I resent that,” Kane complained in good humor as the two of them stepped aside a moment later as the trainees returned to their training groups under the oversight of Octavia’s warriors.

“He’s getting lazy,” Indra said, moving towards them from her previous position in the shadows at the edges of the room.

“We train every day,” Kane said, setting his sword down against the weapon bench and picking up a nearby towel. He brought the thin, graying material across his hair, slicking the damp strands back before looping the towel over his shoulders. “We’ve got two more years until the ground is safe, and there’s not really much we can do except train and catch up on our reading lists.”

“Speak for yourself,” Octavia scoffed, sheathing her sword across her back. Indra fell in next to her, the master turned second. “You don’t have the eyes of twelve hundred people watching your every move.”

“We’ve had peace for two and a half years now,” Kane reminded her. “For the first time since we landed, we are truly at peace.”

“Sure,” Octavia agreed wryly, the corner of her mouth twisting up in a dark smile. “All it took was the end of the world.”

 

~ ~ ~

Abby wished she’d had the chance to speak to Clarke one last time.

Once the death wave had hit, communication was lost, and now she didn’t know if her daughter was even alive. She hoped so – oh, how she hoped! – but the ground was not friendly to hope. It liked to tear it to shreds, as if offended by the idea that good could be found during such anguish and struggle.

She was walking out of medical after her daily shift had transferred over to Jackson, and saw Kane waiting for her at the entrance to the white-washed concrete walls of the bunker’s medical level. His face was flushed and his eyes bright, his gray-streaked dark hair slicked away from his features.

He’d been training again.

Abby met him with a kiss, the gesture natural and familiar after three years. She tasted the faint residue of sweat on his lips, salty and metallic, and his shirt was damp under her fingers.

“All good?” Kane asked her as they walked back together to their shared room, his fingers warm in hers.

“All good,” Abby responded. “Just the normal cases, nothing serious.”

“Let’s hope it stays that way,” he said.

 

 

_6 years after Praimfaya_

They were trapped.

Octavia sat against the wall of the exit room of the bunker, staring at the immovable door with the weight of Polis keeping them underground. It was a year past the time when they should have emerged, pale and blinking, into the light of the world reborn through the flames of Praimfaya.

Their salvation had become their tomb.

She had asked the engineers responsible for running the hydroponics and life support of the bunker how long they could survive, and gotten the answer that if they were careful and another catastrophe didn’t occur, the Second Dawn bunker could be the next Mount Weather.

The one fact Octavia clung to was that they were still alive. Where there was life, there was hope. Even if that hope was a thin, weak thing that struggled to stay afloat under the crushing waves of reality.


	4. The Forgotten

_150 years since outside contact_

Icarus was a pile of jittery nerves.

He hadn’t slapped on a caffeine patch or chugged an energy shot; he was just excited. After a generation of slow travel back from the asteroid mining station where his ancestors had waited for Earth to cool from the radiation it had taken during the Last War, the Eligius Colony was going home.

Icarus was part of the space generation, those born on the journey from the abandoned mining facilities to Earth. He didn’t know what it was like to be trapped by rock walls – the dark, endless stretch of space was his cage, with Earth as a faint speck on the horizon, the North Star that grew steadily bigger and bigger.

Until now, when the planet stretched large in front of him, the surface pale and gray, touched only by green in very few places.

Icarus took a deep, steadying breath before he settled his hands over the grips of the thrusters. Today, he would go from the quiet kid who aced his pilot exams to the one who brought the last of the human race back home.

No pressure.

“You got this,” his co-pilot Cas said confidently. She sat to the right of him, his eyes and ears for the internal reactions of their ship. His job was to focus on the descent and setting them down smooth and safely. “Just pretend this is a sim; it will be over before you know it.”

He nodded, and slowly eased the thrusters forward. The ship rumbled under his feet, their steady pace they’d maintained for a generation of travel shifting into a quicker, manually-operated speed. His heart thumped almost too-fast, pounding heavy and insistent against his chest.

This was it. No more waiting. No more tasteless protein paste from the vats of their food chemists. No more population control. They’d made it.

They didn’t need to survive anymore; now, they could live.

An old space station came into view as it orbited the Earth, its circular shape warped and scarred by a hundred years or more in space. Icarus recognized it from his lessons on old-Earth technology as Go-Sci, one of the experimental stations who had been one of his colony’s contacts before the apocalypse.

“Whoa,” Cas said, glancing up from her panels to the station. “That’s . . .”

“I know,” Icarus replied, smiling.

The comms suddenly crackled to life, signaling an incoming, external transmission. That was unexpected, but as Cas flicked the switch to connect onto the signal, Icarus figured it must be an old beacon, still running after all these years. Because there couldn’t be survivors on that station . . . could there?

“ _Ark Station to the ground,_ ” the radio crackled, static blurring the looped message so that it came through in skipping bursts.

“Wait, what? The ground?” Cas said, sharing a mirrored expression of confusion with Icarus. “There’s no way anyone could have survived on the ground.”

“ _This is Raven Reyes. If you are receiving, please respond._ ”

Icarus halted the forward motion of the ship, which he knew would bring a flurry of questions from the captain, his block officer, the engineers in charge of making sure their engines could handle the unused strain of their descent. Because the start date of the loop had appeared on Cas’s comm screen . . . and it was from six years ago.

He didn’t think, he just acted.

“Gagarin to Ark Station,” he said, opening communication between their ship and the received signal. “We read you.”

 

 

_6 years and 6 days after Praimfaya_

They were going to die.

The rocket was useless, denying them their one and only way to the ground. The algae farm had been struggling for two months, and they had been on minimal water usage for eight months. The oxygen scrubbers were still running strong though, so at least they wouldn’t suffocate to death, even if that would be a quicker end.

“I’ve done the math over and over,” Wick said at the meeting he and Raven had called in Earth Monitoring. The mood was somber in the light of the inescapable future they faced. “We’ve got maybe a month left until the farms quit.”

Bellamy let his breath out in a quiet explosion as he closed his eyes against the stark reality they’d been presented with. After all they’d done, all they’d lost and sacrificed, it had still been just a temporary escape.

“No, there’s got to be something,” Murphy protested angrily, shaking his head. “That can’t be it. I didn’t come back here just to die. If I wanted that, I would have stayed back on Earth.”

“Do you think we _want_ to accept this?” Raven retorted, meeting Murphy’s fierce glare. “We’ve done everything we can, Murphy. _Everything_. But the fact is that we’re out of working parts to fix our life support systems, both compatible and adjustable.”

“And the Ring doesn’t have the thrusters like the rest of the Ark did, so using this as our ride down isn’t an option,” Wick added quietly.

Murphy growled and then stalked from the room, brushing Emori aside when she started after him. Almost as soon as the doors hissed shut after him, they heard something thudding into the metal wall accompanied by harsh, muffled yells.

Static crackled from the radio, but they’d learned to ignore it now. Communication to the ground was blocked by the radiation-choked atmosphere, and nothing Raven or Wick had done could boost the signal for a clear connection. The only comfort Bellamy clung to was that the static meant there was life somewhere else; that his people would still survive even if he didn’t.

But then the static sharpened and leveled into a strange, oddly accented voice.

“ _Gagarin to Ark Station. We read you_.”

“What the hell?” Raven breathed, sharing an instinctive glance with Wick before she darted over to the comm panel. The message repeated, even clearer this time. “That’s . . . I don’t know . . .” She took a breath and then lifted the receiver. “Ark Station to Gagarin, this is Raven Reyes. Now who the hell are you?”

“ _My name is Icarus Mikeson,_ ” the voice said. “ _From the Eligius Colony_.”

 

~ ~ ~

 

“Are you insane?” Cas said, gaping at Icarus as he lowered the radio. “We can’t . . . we should have gotten permission to contact . . .”

“ _Mikeson, why the_ hell _have we stopped???_ ”

“ _This is engineering. Uh, everything’s running fine down here; is there a different reading that you’re getting that caused you to stop?_ ”

“ _What’s going on, Icarus?_ ”

“ _Talk to me, Mikeson.”_

The flurry of questions came thick and fast over the internal comms, just as Icarus had expected and Cas had predicted. He knew that his actions were outside the normal procedures, but then they hadn’t thought they would receive a sign of recent life.

“Sorry about the pause in descent,” Icarus told their colony’s captain. “We received current communications from the old Go-Sci station in orbit. We . . .” – he shook his head, still reeling from the information – “we’re not alone.”

 

~ ~ ~

 

Raven set the receiver down and took a deep breath before glancing over at the others gathered around her, matching expressions of baffled surprise and hope which she knew were mirrored on her own features.

“He did say _colony_ , right?” Wick said, holding a hand up as if he could pause time in order to process the information that had just been dumped upon them. “How was there a freaking _colony_ out here that we didn’t know about?”

The others added their own comments and questions, but Raven squeezed her eyes shut. The name Eligius lurked at the corners of her mind, scattered pieces of something she felt she should know.

“Shut up for a second, okay?” she snapped, her frustration cutting through the voices. She brought her hands up to her temples as she racked her brain for anything, _anything_ that could bring those shadowy, slippery memories to light. “I’ve heard that name before . . . oh.”

Raven opened her eyes as the memory of what the name Eligius meant and why their presence was so mysterious. And, most importantly, who these people were.

“What is it?” Bellamy prompted, stirring her from her whirling thoughts.

“They’re Nightbloods,” she said, meeting his questioning gaze. “All of them.”

“ _Raven Reyes?_ ” The comms crackled to life again, bringing the crisp, rolling voice of Icarus Mikeson to them.

The door hissed open and Murphy stuck his head in, his hair rumpled and the knuckles of his right hand bleeding.

“I guess you know there’s a big-ass ship next to us,” he said, motioning with a thumb over his shoulder, “since you’re all group-hugging the radio.”

“ _Are you able to receive a shuttle? We’re sending a recon group to you.”_

“Yeah, we know,” Monty said after the newest transmission had ended.

“They’ve got to have one hell of a pilot if they want to hook up with us,” Wick said to Raven. “We can activate the airlocks on our end, but our magnet-guides are shot. They’d be flying a blind attachment.”

“Hold up, this means we’re getting off of this thing, right?” Murphy asked.

“Let’s hope so,” Wick said, pulling up a diagram of the Ring on the screen in front of him. “We don’t know what these people want.”

“But we do know they’re our only chance,” Bellamy said firmly. After what thinking they had no other future but death, they had suddenly been presented with yet another second chance at life. He glanced over at their small group. “Arm up. I’m not taking any chances, even if these are the good guys here.”

“Aw, c’mon, Bellamy,” Murphy said as he, Echo, Emori, and Monty left Earth Monitoring to get their respective weapons. “We all know there are no good or bad people left, just survivors.”

“Hey, Mikeson,” Raven said over the radio. “We can receive, but you’ve got to have one hell of a pilot since we’re running on bare minimum here.”

“ _Copy that. I was the top of my class and youngest certified pilot of the colony in sixty years. I can do a blind dock, no problem._ ”

“That sounds familiar,” Wick murmured, nudging Raven. “Mystery aside, I think I like this Icarus kid.”

“Shut up,” Raven told him lovingly, and then clicked the radio on again. “Right then, Icarus – time to walk the talk.”

 _“We’ll radio once preliminary connection is enabled._ ”

“You got it,” Raven said, and then set the receiver down.

“They sound pretty legit,” Wick commented.

“They sound militant,” Bellamy corrected, straightening his shoulders. “But we have to take this one step at a time. We’re strangers to them, too.”

“Well, here goes nothing,” Raven said, getting to her feet. “I can’t believe I’d ever say this, but” – she grinned – “we’ve got company.”


	5. Hope

_8 months after Praimfaya_

The Earth was in ruins.

The once-thick forests were now a collection of charred kindling, slowly blowing away in the fierce storms that built up with little warning to batter the wounded ground with lightning and torrential, boiling-hot rain. The irradiated air stung her lungs if she breathed too deeply, but her Nightblood had prevailed.

It had been two months since Clarke had left the laboratory bunker, packing her remaining supplies into the rover which she had adopted as her new, mobile home. There was still nothing but silence from the portable radio she’d cobbled together in those first few weeks after her survival, but she refused to abandon her hope.

Silence didn’t mean death. Not this time.

Clarke parked the rover and set the solar panels to charge before she exited through the rear doors, radio in hand. Ash coated her boots in a fine, chalky layer of gray, swirling up from the ground with every step. Flakes of sooty snow danced in the air, and her breath gusted out in small clouds.

So far, the biggest change that Praimfaya had brought was the irregular weather, with the violent storms and ever-changing temperature. The earth was still in shock, and Clarke wondered if it would be able to heal from nuclear destruction a second time.

When she was a few feet from the rover, she set the small signal dish down and adjusted the antenna so that it was pointing straight up at the sky. Once it was in position, she glanced up at the swirling, flame-colored atmosphere which still blocked her view of the stars and the bright speck of the orbiting Ring.

Maybe today her daily messages would be answered.

“Bellamy,” she said, lifting the wireless receiver to her mouth and speaking slowly, wishing her voice to carry on the wings of data up to the one person who still centered her even his absence. “It’s been seven months of this now – me radioing with nothing in return. I don’t want to think that means you’re dead, not after everything we did to survive, and so I won’t. I’m going to keep on hoping that, one day, you’ll hear me. You’ll know I’m alive.”

Clarke took a deep breath, tears stinging at her eyes. She knew that there was no reason for him to hope that she had survived; even she had thought her fate was sealed when she’d stayed behind. The sooner that grief could be lifted from his shoulders, the better.

They’d lost each other too many times already.

“Anyways,” she continued. “I’m not giving up on you, Bellamy. I believe in you, in _all_ of you. I know there’s still a lot of time left between now and when it’s safe enough for you to come back, but I’ll be here. We _will_ meet again.”

 

 

_6 years and 7 days after Praimfaya_

The wrong ship had landed an hour ago.

Clarke lay on her stomach at the edge of the ridge which overlooked the green stretch of land she had watched spring back to life after Praimfaya. Through the cross-hairs of her rifle scope, she inspected the faded title of the ship again – Prisoner Transport. It reminded her of her own journey to the ground, back when she had carried the title of prisoner on her shoulders.

But what prison was so large to warrant a ship this size to transport its inhabitants?

Madi crawled back after slipping away to the rover for food a few minutes ago, and offered a strip of jerky to Clarke, who took it with a murmured word of gratitude.

“What are they waiting for?” Madi whispered, though there really wasn’t a need for silence considering the ship was far away enough and the wind was blowing in their faces.

“I don’t know,” Clarke replied around the mouthful of jerky that she’d bitten off. She set her rifle aside and blinked rapidly to clear her vision after squinting through the limited view of the scope. “Maybe they’re waiting to test the air and see if it’s safe for them to come out?”

“Are they going to find us?” Madi asked, worry winning over the curiosity in her voice and features. “You said this was the wrong ship, so that means whoever is inside is dangerous . . . right?”

“I don’t know,” Clarke repeated, frustration beginning to stir in her chest.

She had no answers, only questions of her own. The sensations of uncertainty and caution were all-too-familiar, bringing back the memories of a past Clarke thought she had buried under the rubble of Praimfaya.

But this time, she was a Grounder watching and wondering about people from the sky. And it was her responsibility to try not to repeat the mistakes of the past.

“No matter what, you know I’ll do anything I can to keep you safe,” she told Madi, looking straight into the girl’s brown, silver-touched eyes. “I promise.”

Madi smiled quietly and rested her head against Clarke’s shoulder, her customary gesture of trust and love.

“I know,” she whispered, adding a minute later, “but I wish the ship you wanted had come instead.”

“Me too,” Clarke sighed, closing her eyes and basking in the strength she drew from the Nightblood girl.

Madi was her family, both sister and daughter, and all she had left. With the arrival of the girl into her life, suddenly Bellamy’s fierce devotion to Octavia had become crystal clear. Clarke knew he would love Madi, too.

“Hey,” Madi said, her voice rising as she suddenly lifted her head. “The door’s opening!”

Clarke opened her eyes and lifted her scope once more. The ship’s door had unsealed in a slowly dissipating gust of steam and was lowering to the ground. Hazy figures moved in the white veil, stepping forward one by one, and Clarke’s heart gave a painful squeeze.

She didn’t know these faces.

Even though this was the wrong ship, she had held a small shred of hope that somehow her friends were on it. But if that had been true, wouldn’t they have been one of the first ones out? And they wouldn’t have waited so long after arrival to depart, especially since they were a year past the safe return date.

These people were foreigners in almost every sense of the word.

Their skin was pale and sallow from a life deprived of proper sunlight, and they raised their hands against the bright light of mid-morning as they stepped onto the ground. They were dressed in similar variations of the same gray, shapeless jumpsuits that made it hard to distinguish gender, and their hair was cropped short against their skulls.

They looked like old-Earth prisoners.

 

***

 

Clarke and Madi stayed on the ridge for the rest of the day, watching the strangers.

The new sky people were well-ordered, moving about with purpose as they set up camp. The cast tents made from a pale, shimmery material that sprang into shape almost magically, causing Madi’s eyes to glimmer with wonder and Clarke’s to narrow in concern over the obviously highly-advanced technology these people had.

And there were also the weapons they carried, silver guns strapped to their thighs and long, sleek rifles held by those who had been chosen for guard duty. Which brought the question of _why_ they were acting so careful. Did they know about the survivors on the ground? Would they view Clarke and Madi as threats instead of potential allies?

Those doubts were what gave Clarke hesitation on her initial plan of introducing herself to the newcomers. There were just too many potentially dangerous variables, and she needed time to observe them so she could formulate the best plan of making them aware of her and the other Nightbloods presence.

When the sky began to darken, Clarke and Madi went back to the rover. It was obvious that the strangers weren’t going to be exploring their new home tonight, and she wanted to put some more distance between them.

“Are we going to get the others?” Madi asked as they drove through the forest, the outline of trees and bushes stark in the glow of the rover’s headlights.

Clarke shook her head. If they went back to the village, there would be more questions instead of the answers they needed. Beni would worry, and then so would the rest of the village, too.

“Not yet,” she finally said, parking the rover at the edge of a small clearing about five miles from the ridge.

 

***

 

Clarke couldn’t sleep.

Madi had been out for hours, curled up in a little ball on the pile of furs that served as a bed in the back of the rover. Clarke wished she could rest that easily, and she had been able to for the past six years . . . until today. There was just too much spinning her mind, a pile of _what ifs_ that made her chest tighten with unease and kept her eyes open during the long hours of the night.

And so she clicked on the small dash light, shifting up into a sitting position from the reclined driver’s seat, and opened the leather-wrapped bundle she kept in the storage compartment under her seat. The dim glow of the small light illuminated the sketchpads and pencils she had taken from a dusty cabinet back in the underground laboratory, smudged dates at the top corners of the sketchpads marking her time spent on earth after Praimfaya.

The first sketchpad’s binding had come undone, and Clarke leafed through the loose pages full of stark landscapes that pictured the destruction she had witnessed in the earth. There was the dusty ruins of Polis, towering piles of rubble over the bunker that still held the remnants of her people. On another page she had sketched the thin skeleton of a forest, black branches reaching like weary fingers.

The second sketchpad had more of what the Earth had been like, captured memories of the Polis marketplace, warriors training in Tondc, and the dropship that had brought her to earth. There were also creatures in here, like the mighty Pauna or the two-headed horse she had once ridden. Butterflies clustered in a meadow, illuminating the night. A bird leaping to flight from a branch, wings held high and proud.

And in the third sketchpad, she had finally drawn those she had lost. It was this one which Clarke now opened, turning to a portrait of Bellamy as she’d last seen him, his gaze both hopeful and comforting in the face of the oncoming terror of Praimfaya. She reached out and ran her fingers lightly down the graphite line of his jaw, wishing once again that she could know if he was alive or not. Especially now.

“Where are you?” she whispered to the silent portrait. “It’s been a _year_ , Bellamy. You could have been back for a year, but you’re still not here.”

She wanted the steadying force of his presence as she faced this new, unknown future that the strange ship had brought with it. With Bellamy at her side, she had felt like anything was possible because together they had seemed unstoppable. She wanted to hear his again. She wanted to feel his arms around her, anchoring her with their warm strength.

Clarke had wanted Bellamy for six years.

He was her hope.


	6. The Future of Earth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigedasleng translations in end notes.

_6 years and 6 days after Praimfaya_

Murphy usually wasn’t the type to judge the people who’d just saved his life, but he didn’t like these Eligius people. They were too damn polite and, in his experience, that always meant trouble.

“Warm welcome,” he muttered to Emori as they followed their rescuers off the shuttle that had taken them from the dying Ring. Stares came from all directions as they walked down a hall, the short-haired colonists eyeing them more like prisoners of war than guests.

“ _Shof op_ ,” she cautioned him, reaching out to catch his hand with hers and squeezing it lightly. “ _Osir laik nou tona; emo laik tona._ ”

“I know,” he replied. Their whispered conversation caught the attention of one of their escorts from the shuttle, and Murphy held the man’s gaze until he looked away. “ _Ai nou wich em in._ ”

A few minutes later, they were brought into what was obviously the medical section of the ship, with locked steel cabinets and equipment that Murphy recognized from his short time around Abby Griffin. The warnings swirling in his gut surged higher, climbing and twisting around his heart. He’d never liked medical bays, and that hadn’t changed.

“Don’t worry,” a woman said, brushing aside an opaque plastic sheet that hung across the far end of the room as she walked towards them. Her short hair was streaked with gray, and while her smile was warm, her eyes remained bland. She caught Murphy’s suspicious look, and it was him she addressed. “We just need to do a quick check-up and inoculate against any possible diseases.”

“Great,” Murphy said. “When are we going to the ground?”

The doctor shared a quick look with one of the colonists from the shuttle, in which time Bellamy caught Murphy’s gaze and shook of his head.

Murphy knew what he was telling him – play it safe. He rolled his eyes in response. Please. As if _he_ was going to mess up their only chance back home; he wasn’t that stupid.

“Descent has been put on temporary hold until further notice,” the colonist replied, marking him as a leader of sorts.

And then he left, leaving them alone with the doctor.

“Well, let’s get this over with,” Raven said, going over to one of the metal benches set along the wall and sitting down. She rolled up her sleeve and presented her bare arm to the doctor. “The sooner we’re out of here, the sooner all of us can go home, right?”

 

~ ~ ~

 

Monty hated needles.

Ever since he was little, he’d loathed the sensation of cool metal sliding under his skin, filling his bloodstream with strange components. It was why, even though shooting up with illegally processed drugs was something he’d always heard was better than smoking or drinking them, he’d never done it. He’d liked his highs, but he hadn’t liked them _that_ much.

When the Eligius doctor finally approached him with the required inoculation, the long steel needle glinting in the light panels overhead, he felt the familiar twist of horror and nausea in his stomach. As she swabbed at the crook of his elbow, he squeezed his eyes shut, preparing himself for the inevitable pain.

It hurt like hell, but it was over soon. Since he was the last one to be inoculated, it was over for all of them, too.

“I’ll be right back,” the doctor said, walking towards the back of the room. “I forgot my tablet for the checkup diagnostic app.”

“Take your time,” Murphy called out after her.

“Is it just me, or do you guys feel a bit bombed, too?” Wick mumbled, reaching up to rub blearily at his eyes.

Now that it had been mentioned, Monty did notice that his vision had started to warp and blur at the edges. Huh. That was . . . interesting. He snorted in amusement, though he wasn’t sure what he found funny. No, wait – _everything_ was funny. And the floor was tilting, swirling, rising up to meet his face.

“Oh, crap,” he heard himself mumble, right before he passed out.

 

~ ~ ~

 

“Hurry up,” Icarus’ block officer said, as they reentered the room where the slumped bodies of the rescued people lay on the metal floor of the medical bay. “Doc said the drug works fast but leaves just as quickly, so we’ve got maybe fifteen minutes to get them secured before they start to wake up.”

Icarus nodded in acknowledgement and bent down, rolling one of the drugged women onto her stomach and restraining her wrists behind her back with a zip-cuff. After their hands were bound, they were lifted onto med-carts and rolled down to the containment level where only a few rooms had been left in their original, cellblock condition.

He knew this was to protect the colony, since any unknown component was a risk, but it still felt wrong. These people had trusted them. In return, his people locked them up like they were convicted criminals, even though the only crime they had committed was simply existing.

“They’re going to hate us,” he said, once he had closed the door on the last cell.

“So?” His block officer shrugged. Gavin Aldon was a man of practicality and cold logic. He trusted in the colony laws while Icarus constantly struggled with doubt. “They’re unknowns. You know the rules; the risks. We can’t let a potential danger go unchecked. The needs of the many–”

“Outweigh the needs of the few,” Icarus finished. “I know. I just . . . I wish there was another way. They’re part of humanity, too.”

“Which is why they should understand why we’re doing this,” Gavin replied. His earpiece blinked with an incoming comm, and he clicked it on to receive. A minute later, he glanced at Icarus. “Captain wants to speak with their leader.”

 

~ ~ ~

 

Bellamy surged forward with a cut-off yell, cold metal digging into the skin of his wrists and preventing him from moving more than a few inches.

Those Eligius people had drugged them, he’d realized, in those last hazy moments of awareness. He had just enough consciousness for a spark of surprise and panic before he blacked out, but all of that came rushing back doubled now. His vision was hazy, and he blinked rapidly in an attempt to clear it, which soon worked.

He was in a small room with scuff marks and scratched graffiti on the metal walls. A light panel was the only illumination, and the chair he was in seemed to be the only furnishings.

“Sorry about the rough welcome,” one of the strange, oddly clipped voices of the colonists said. “But I hope you understand the need for our precaution.”

“Not really,” Bellamy rasped, squinting at the figure which was slowly coming into focus in front of him.

He flexed his hands experimentally, instinctively. The cuffs were stiff and unmoving, and the tips of his fingers throbbed with loss of circulation.

“Then I shall clarify,” the voice continued, moving closer. The speaker was a tall, thin-shouldered man with carefully blank features. His short hair had thinned to the point of almost-extinction.

“Until we intercepted your radio signal, we thought we were the last.”

“We got that much, yeah,” Bellamy said, channeling a dry, Murphy-like smile. “But that doesn’t explain why you’re treating us – living proof that you’re _not_ alone anymore – like we’re a threat. We’re not. All we want is to go back home, to the ground. That’s it.”

“I know about the secondary wave of radiation,” the colonist said, leaning back against the presumably locked door and folding his arms across his chest. “And seven people alive in space a hundred years after the end of the world doesn’t make sense. So, logically, there must have been more of you at some point, right?”

“There _are_ more of us,” Bellamy corrected him, and while he didn’t know for sure, he wouldn’t give up hope. “Look, I know what you’re thinking, okay? I’ve been there. When we first came to Earth, we thought we were the last, too. But we weren’t. There won’t be anything else like there was six years ago, right? So, we’re safe; _you’re_ safe.”

“I have four hundred people to think of,” the man replied, his eyes narrowing. “I am the captain of this colony. Those people are my responsibility, and if I think even one of them is in danger, I will not hesitate to do whatever it may take to ensure the safety of this colony.”

Bellamy shook his head, biting back a frustrated growl. The worst part was that he had been here; seven years ago, he had captured and tortured a man who had also acted in the presumed best interest of his people.

Somewhere a line had to be drawn between what was right for _only_ your people, or what was right for _all_ people.

“So why even bother taking us aboard?” he asked, his voice a cool, even tone. “If you think we’re so dangerous to your people, you should have just left us.”

“You’re dangerous,” the captain replied with a little shrug. “But you’re useful. You know the ground, well, what the ground had been like six years ago. And you’re also hostages now, since I’m sure your people have been waiting to see you for some time.”

“I don’t suppose I can change your mind about this” – Bellamy pulled at his restraints – “can I? You want what’s best for your people, I get that. Trust me, I do.”

“I know,” the captain said. “Which is why I’m even more convinced that keeping you contained is for the best. You know that I would do anything for my people . . . because you would do anything for your people.”

“I _have_ ,” Bellamy said, and this time the frustration slipped out.

“So if our people’s priorities collided, well” – the captain smiled, spreading his hands out in an ambient gesture – “that is a future I’m doing my best to avoid.”

Bellamy thought that by trying to avoid such a future, the Eligius captain was bringing it upon himself. He racked his brain for something, _something_ that would convince this man that he and his people were not in danger from Bellamy’s people. But any argument he thought of, he also thought of a counterargument that could be used against it, and so he was stuck in an endless loop.

The uncertainty was so damn familiar that Bellamy wanted to yell. Hadn’t they moved past these grievances by now? They’d discovered that Earth was survivable. They had fought and lost with the Grounders, fought and won, and then finally found peace.

They had survived Praimfaya, and the future was supposed to be open and easier than the past.

“We are going to resume our descent in a half hour,” the captain said. “A block will come to escort you and your companions to their seats in a few minutes, and I hope you’ll be as compliant as possible. Despite our differences, I don’t want to kill you.”

Once again, Bellamy delivered a dry, sharp smile. Murphy would be so proud.

“That’s very comforting,” he said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Emori: Be quiet. We are not many; they are many.
> 
> Murphy: I don't trust them.


	7. Nightblood

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigedasleng translation in end notes.

_2 days on the ground_

Icarus volunteered to be on the first scouting mission.

He didn’t want to discover possible threats; he just wanted to see the ground. And since he’d also been top of his class in Earth Skills, he was a prime choice for the task.

“We know there are survivors down here,” Gavin had said when the team gathered up just outside the ship door. “Orders are to act first, ask questions later. We don’t know if they’re hostile, but we aren’t taking any chances. Don’t ignore your instincts; if you think something’s dangerous, it probably is.”

 _Our mindset of survival first, peace later seems dangerous_ , Icarus thought treasonously.

Either way he looked, he saw the logic behind the reasonings of both sides. His colony had survived this long by following the rules of the first captain – keep humanity alive and well, no matter the cost. If there was an element of danger, do all within your power to neutralize or remove it.

The needs of the many outweighed the needs of the few.

But things were different now, or at least they had the opportunity to be so. They didn’t need to keep rations and population to a minimum; conservation was no longer necessary. They could take the risks they couldn’t before . . . like reaching out to other survivors.

As his team left their budding campsite, the metal hull of their ship glinting dully in the brightening rays of morning sunlight, Icarus wished he could stop and take in everything one at a time. Like the quiet shadows of the forest or how the ground was firm and springy beneath his feet, so different from the inflexible metal flooring of the _Gagarin._ The sliding melodies of birds calling to each other in the treetops or the muted orchestra of various insects humming and buzzing about.

He wished he had the time to appreciate this home he was descended from, but they had a task to accomplish and a colony who was counting on him to do so.

 

 

 

_6 years and 8 days after Praimfaya_

 

 

 

Clarke heard them before she saw them.

She had left the rover a few minutes ago, Madi still fast asleep in the back, to relieve herself. She was heading back to radio Bellamy when a group of the strangers pushed out of the undergrowth just a few yards in front of her.

For one moment their gazes met, her silver-touched blue to their various hues. And then the closest man reached for the gun holstered at his side. He was fast, but Clarke was faster.

Stepping forward, she unslung her rifle from her shoulder in a quick, smooth motion and brought butt crashing into the man’s wrist with a sharp crack. He yelled in both surprise and pain, dropping his now-unholstered gun reflexively as his fingers went numb. At the same time, Clarke continued in her forward motion, bringing her elbow up into his chin and bringing him to the ground with a sweep of her foot.

It seemed to happen in slow-motion, her actions mapped out like she was following an instruction sheet. But in reality, it was only a few seconds, ending with her crouched over the fallen man, her knee pinning his chest to the ground and her free hand pressing a knife to his throat.

“ _Step of o em wan op!_ ” she warned. “ _Nau!”_

~ ~ ~

 

The woman came out of seemingly nowhere, like the forest personified. Her silver-hued eyes flickered over them, her features passing through a blur of emotions.

Icarus’ reaction was one of curious shock at this proof of life on the ground; Gavin’s was to pull a gun on her.

“No, wait!” he said, stepping forward, but it was too late.

One moment Gavin had his pistol out, and the next the grounder woman had him down and neutralized, a blade glinting against his throat. She snapped at them in a foreign language that also seemed oddly familiar, rolling over the tongue with ease. But her intention was clear.

“Stand down,” Icarus told the rest of the team, who had their guns aimed at the woman. He was the only one who hadn’t reached for his weapon, an action he knew would get back to the captain the moment they returned to camp.

If they returned to camp. If this grounder was here, and the rescued strangers were right, she wasn’t the only one. And if all of them were as skilled as she was, their little scouting group didn’t stand a chance.

“I don’t think so,” Trent Miller said, Gavin’s handpicked choice for the mission. The two of them were partners and they acted like it, sharing the same mindset as well as their lives. “This could be a trap.”

“ _Klark?_ ”

The grounder woman’s head whipped to the side, fear glinting her eyes as a smaller figure came into view through the underbrush.

“ _Bak op, Madi!_ ” she said.

The girl started to retreat, but Trent switched his aim from the woman threatening Gavin over to the new arrival.

“How many of you are there?” he demanded.

“Stop!” Icarus said, stepping in front of Trent’s gun, right as the grounder woman launched herself up from Gavin towards Trent.

“ _Ron we kamp raun osir stegeda,_ ” she yelled, and then tackled Trent.

“Go!” Icarus said, turning to the girl and gesturing for her to run.

She hesitated for a moment, obviously torn between following her command or helping her companion, her brown eyes wide and confused. But then she darted back into the underbrush, her fleeing footsteps swallowed up by the sounds of the struggle she was leaving behind.

A gunshot rang out in the space it took for Icarus to turn back to his team. The woman had somehow managed to wrestle Trent’s gun from his grip, and he writhed in pain, clutching at the wound in his calf.

“Don’t kill her!” Gavin roared, as the woman stood up and pointed the stolen gun on him.

 

~ ~ ~

 

Clarke’s heartbeat thundered in her ears, matching the rapid pace of her breathing. She had been ready to take the high road and lower her weapon first, but then they threatened Madi and everything but the need to protect her had disappeared. And she would do it again without a second thought.

Once again, a stand-off was occurring between her and the sky people. They could kill her easily – they had the advantage of outnumbering her – but they didn’t.

Of course. They needed information, and she was their Lincoln. She hoped she would be as strong as him, since there was no Octavia as her weakness.

Well, maybe she would bend for the one who hadn’t hesitated to put his life before that of a stranger when he stepped in front of Madi to protect her from his own people.

“I don’t want to kill you,” she said slowly. Their surprise at her use of English would have been comical if the situation wasn’t as tense as it was. “But I will not let you hurt my . . .”

She trailed off in confusion as she saw the color of the blood trickling down the chin of the first _skai raunon_ she had fought, the liquid inky and dull against his pale skin. Thoughts battled for dominion in her mind – confusion, surprise, wonder, curiosity – before she was able to rein them in.

“ _Natblida_ ,” she murmured, shaking her head. “It can’t be . . .”

She heard footsteps behind her a moment later, and she turned around just in time to see the kind-hearted stranger bring the butt of his gun against his temple.

Clarke crumpled to the ground, blackness sweeping around her and pulling her under into oblivion.

 

~ ~ ~

 

He didn’t have another choice.

The way things were, Icarus knew that lives could be lost if it wasn’t stopped. Since the grounder woman had seemed to disregard his presence as a threat – and he wasn’t one, not really; sure, he knew how to defend himself, but he wasn’t aggressive . . . as his reaction to her violence had proven – he had the advantage of surprise.

Gavin didn’t want to kill her, and Icarus knew why. She was living, breathing information. They needed her knowledge.

And so, as he brought the butt of his gun into her temple, he sent a quiet apology towards her. He hoped she would understand why he knocked her out.

“Good job,” Gavin said, kneeling by the limp form of the woman and quickly cuffing her wrists behind her back. “But since the little one got away, if her people didn’t know we’re here, they will soon. We have to be ready.”

Icarus nodded, holstering his gun. As he watched Gavin tend to Trent’s flesh wound, he wondered what their future held now.

The woman had only attacked after Gavin drew his gun on her. She hadn’t killed Trent, even though she could have. Every action of hers had been in self-defense, and yet he was the one who had enabled her capture.

And if war came because of this moment, its first blood would be on his hands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Clarke: Back off or he dies! Now!  
> Madi: Clarke?  
> Clarke: Go back, Madi.
> 
> Clarke: Run away and go to our village!
> 
> skai rounon = sky person
> 
> Clarke: Nightblood.


	8. Little One

_9 months after Praimfaya_

She was alone.

Madi thought she was dead. Things were gray and hot like in the stories about the Under her uncle had told her about. And everyone she found was nothing but crumbling bones, blowing away in the storms.

But she was still hungry, and so she hunted, even though there wasn’t much to find. Rats that crawled into small corners and bit her fingers when she grabbed at them, their raw meat warm and stringy in her mouth. Flat bugs that she found under rocks and burnt trees, the taste of them cold and squishy.

Water was hard to find, too. It burned her stomach and made her cough up black liquid, though the water from the sky didn’t hurt her.

Madi wished she had died in a better place. She wanted to curl up and forget everything.

She wanted to forget when the sky was fire and she had hidden from it in the bottom of her home, the rock walls smoking and steaming from the heat. She wanted to forget the loneliness. She wanted to forget and fade away, like the bones she found.

It was when she was sitting, rat blood sticky on her fingers and mouth, and wishing again to forget when the sun woman came.

She didn’t belong in the gray and the hot – she was too pretty for that. Her eyes were the color of the sky before the fire burned the blue away into ash, and when she saw Madi, she smiled.

“Hello, little Nightblood,” she said.

 

_6 years and 8 days after Praimfaya_

Madi didn’t go to the village.

Instead, she followed the sky people as they took Clarke away. This time, she was quiet when she walked, her feet almost silent on the forest floor. When she wanted to, she was very, very good at being quiet.


	9. We The People

_6 years and 3 days after Praimfaya_

Octavia walked into the bunker’s control room flanked by Indra and Kane. Hope burned bright and taunting in the aura of the room, every eye alight with it; the feeling was more contagious than a disease.

“Talk,” she said to Graham, their new head of engineering after Sinclair. He was the one who had radioed with the message that he might have stumbled across a way out. “What did you find?”

Graham was around the same age as Bellamy, with wild blonde hair that never stayed out of his eyes, no matter how many times he pushed it back. Octavia thought that he would have cut it by now, but obviously not. But he was a damn good engineer, and so if he said there was a possible exit, he had everyone’s attention.

“So, I was talking to one of the native Polis residents,” Graham said, pulling a digital blueprint of the bunker on the large wall screen opposite of the door. “And nearby caves were mentioned, and it turns out that they” – he tapped something on the panel in front of him, and the blueprint zoomed in to one of the smaller rooms on the third level – “could intersect with the bunker wall here.”

“Which means we could drill through and make a back door, given that the caves are still intact of course,” Jaha said, his voice pensive. He wasn’t Octavia’s favorite member of their diverse council of leadership for the bunker, but he was a good strategist.

“Absolutely,” Graham agreed, nodding. His hair flopped and he reached a hand up to push it back, and Octavia smirked faintly as the wild locks just fell right back.

“This sounds pretty solid,” she said. “But I assume there’s a catch, right?”

“Yes, unfortunately.” Graham shrank the blueprint again so that the entire bunker was shown in simple, digital lines. “A lot of our power lines and systems are built into the walls we’d have to drill into. If we did this and it was a bust . . . we’d have ruined our chances of survival down here. System failure would happen in, oh, three to four months.”

“Is there any way to test this?” Octavia asked, but halfway through her question, Graham was shaking his head.

“Not without an outside pair of eyes,” he said quietly. “If we had contact with the Ring survivors, mayb–”

“But we don’t,” Octavia interrupted.

She closed her eyes, her hand finding the handle of the sword sheathed at her hip and gripping the leather-wrapped hilt comfortingly. She heard the murmuring voices of the other council members as they discussed and debated this new information they’d been presented with, but she tuned them out.

She was unusually good at that, which helped in times like this when she needed to be alone with her thoughts.

But a voice broke through her pensive meditation a minute later, Jaha’s words practical but uncomfortably blunt at the same time. Octavia was all for the cold truth, but the once-Chancellor had a way of delivering hard facts with an emotionless, robotic view. It was like his time as Alie’s prophet had erased all of his compassion and kept the survivalist logic, leaving him even more ruthless than he had been on the Ark.

“We can’t tell the people about this,” he said, and Octavia gritted her teeth as she had no choice but to agree with him.

She opened her eyes, fixing Graham with a resolute, commanding gaze.

“This knowledge is considered classified,” she said, carefully transferring the same gaze from person to person until all in the room knew the weight of her decision. “If anyone shares this with those outside this room, it will be viewed as treason.”

“If the people knew about this chance of freedom, there will be chaos,” Kane added, his diplomacy softening the sharp edges of her choice. “We can’t risk their safety, because there will be those who would want to drill through the walls, no matter the consequences.”

“So . . . we’re _not_ going to drill?” Graham asked cautiously. “Look, I know it’s not a very good chance, but it’s still a chance . . . right?”

“We’re talking about certain life versus potential death here, Graham,” Kane replied. “It’s not that simple.”

“Either way, we’re going to need time to think about this,” Octavia said. “Graham, I want to you run as many tests as you can” – she held a hand up against his incoming protests – “even if you’ve done them. Run them again. Double check and then check again. We need to know everything about this.”

“Got it,” Graham said, but his brow was drawn.

“As for the rest of us . . .” Octavia took a breath. “We’ll meet again as soon as Graham has more information for us, and go from there.”

After the others had left the room, Octavia leaned against the center desk, her palms braced against the cool wood surface.

Her hope was now tempered with the choice that lay in their future. She wanted to risk their lives because this was the first real chance at freedom they’d had, but the price of failure was one she couldn’t pay.


	10. The Needs Of The Few

_6 years and 8 days after Praimfaya_

It was past noon when Clarke was brought into the stranger’s camp.

The plastic cuffs around her wrists were tight and constrictive, her fingers cold from a lack of circulation. Her head throbbed where she’d been hit, a low, steady ache that radiated down into her jaw with each heartbeat. At least their pace had been slower than she was used to – the strangers walked like the Earth was their enemy, each footstep wary – so she wasn’t tired, just pissed.

But Clarke couldn’t bring herself to hate the strangers. Not yet. They were acting on whatever knowledge they had about the ground, and she was obviously an unexpected factor. She had been just like them when she first came to the ground, and her encounter with unexpected survivors had been worse.

It had been hard to think about peace with those who had speared one of your own . . . but they had found it, and so she was still hopeful. Even though that hope was mingled with frustration at her current state.

Her appearance as she and her captors walked through the camp generated a hum of curiosity that followed them like magnets, whispers and glances thrown at her from every direction. Clarke kept her own glances subtle as she noted the security measures and guards, seeing if there was a chance at escape.

There wasn’t.

The one who had knocked her unconscious, Icarus she’d heard him called, walked next to her. He was a mystery to Clarke, more so than his companions. Their intentions she could read – she was a threat and they were handling her as such. But this one . . . she didn’t know what his intentions were. First, he had protected Madi, but then he had captured Clarke. True, she had been the one threatening his companions, but things still didn’t add up.

As they continued deeper into the camp, obviously still under construction as others milled about, organizing supplies and taking metal parts out of their ship to further build and reinforce the wall they’d erected around their camp, Clarke’s hope flickered with doubt.

She wanted to believe that these people could find peace with their fellow survivors, but with each new glimpse into their lives, she wondered if they could accept any path other than the one they’d been raised to walk. For they seemed like an army – uniformed and armed, their hair and clothes indifferent of gender, and all of them moving with the same kind of organized purpose.

The sight reminded her of Alie’s chipped slaves with the way they seemed to work as if of one mind, the opportunity for chaos erased completely.

“You act like you’re at war,” Clarke said quietly to Icarus, who glanced over at her with mild surprise at the break in her previous silence.

“We always expect and prepare for the worst,” he replied after a moment of hesitation. He cast a doubtful glance at their leader, the one Clarke had first attacked, as if he was afraid of being discovered speaking with their captive. “It’s what’s us alive.”

“I was the same way once,” she murmured, not caring if he heard her or not.

The worst part about seeing the camp and its rigid uniformitarianism was that she didn’t see the joy of coming to Earth, only focus on whatever was their current task. There was the odd few who stopped now and then to either glance at distant forested ridges of the valley or the cloud-brushed sky with a glint of awe in their eyes, but it was only for a moment before they hurried on with their respective duties.

“No one looks happy,” Clarke said, frowning. Even when they had landed, their reactions had been of caution and inspection, not relief. “What’s wrong with you people?”

Icarus didn’t reply, and she didn’t try to get an answer.

 

~ ~ ~

 

Icarus wasn’t happy.

Of course, there was the instinctual relief he felt at the fact that their space days were done and over, but it had quickly been replaced by the new weight of survival on the ground. Maybe if they were alone, or they thought they were alone, things would have been different . . .

“Lars. Ford.” Gavin motioned at the two who had been supporting Trent on the way back. “Take him to medical and then report back to Section 3 and wait for me.”

The two scouts nodded. Icarus watched as Gavin’s tense mask slipped for a moment as he glanced at Trent, a shimmer of worry shining through.

“I’m fine,” Trent gritted out, but his features were pale and drawn with pain and blood loss.

“You better be,” Gavin said, an almost imperceptible tremor in his brusque tone. And then he turned to Icarus, his gaze showing that he knew exactly what he had done and the moment of reckoning was soon. “Mikeson, you’re with me” – he tapped the earpiece of his comm – “since Captain wanted to see the prisoner first thing.”

“Yes, sir,” Icarus said respectfully, glancing at their captive.

. . . but that wasn’t their reality.

This was.

 

~ ~ ~

 

Madi had to wait until dark to get closer to the stranger’s camp, and so she watched helplessly from a tangled clump of bushes as Clarke was taken out of sight.

It was a strange, unwelcome feeling to be separated from the young woman who had become Madi’s family. Without her, she felt lost and unsure, like walking through a dark, unknown tunnel. Anything could happen, and all her imagined scenarios weren’t the good kind.

What if they killed Clarke?

What if they found their hidden village?

What if Madi would find herself alone in a gray world of loss, and this time with no hope of being found?

As the fear and doubt chased themselves round and round in her mind, Madi squeezed her eyes shut. She couldn’t let herself be crippled by her thoughts and fears; Clarke had taught her that.

“I will not be afraid,” she told herself, both whispered aloud and shouted in her head.

Clarke _would_ be fine. Madi _would_ stay strong.

And they _would_ find each other again.

 

~ ~ ~

 

The metal walls and pneumatic doors of the stranger’s ship made Clarke feel like she’d stepped back in time. As her footsteps rang hollowly on the floor and the bright lights set in long strips along the ceiling burned blurry afterimages into her eyes, she half-expected to see members of the Guard striding around a corner or hear the tinny alarm for a solar flare.

When they came to a door helpfully labeled as Captain’s Quarters in chipped, fading black paint, Clarke readied herself for an attempt at diplomacy. The reminiscent feeling strengthened as she slipped into the skin of her younger days, facing another liaison between sky people and grounders.

Except this time, she was the grounder.

The door opened, revealing a room that was part living space, part control room. On one side there was a crisply-made cot, metal lockers above it; on the other side was a row of screens and control panels, multiple views of the ship and its inhabitant’s livestreaming on-screen. Clarke wondered what kind of leader kept eyes on their people this closely to have such an intense security feed linked before she remembered that this had once been a prisoner transport.

Of course.

If these people were descended from prisoners and their guards, that explained the rigorous, militant lifestyle. The only way their ancestors would have known to survive was through strict control over the population – like the Ark, but harsher.

The lone figure in the room turned as Clarke was pushed forward by the one called Gavin, his grip almost painful on her restrained arms. Icarus stayed behind her, a fact Clarke was specifically aware of since it was from such a position that she had ignored him, leading to her captivity.

Their captain studied Clarke with dark, deep-set eyes that hid whatever emotions he might have had in shadows. His wasn’t a pleasant, comforting face – it was the face of a commander, a dedicated leader prepared and able to do whatever it took to ensure his people’s safety.

“Here she is, sir,” Gavin said, his clipped voice breaking through the momentary silence that had ensued upon their arrival.

“You said there was another one?” the captain asked, switching his attention from Clarke to his men.

Gavin nodded, throwing a glare in Clarke’s direction . . . and including Icarus in the disgust, too. Interesting.

“I hope you can understand the gravity of our situation,” the captain continued, walking towards Clarke. He was close enough for her to spit on him if she wanted to, but she knew that was a stupid, petty reaction. She had to put her grievances aside and maybe, _maybe_ that would let her reason with this cool, expressionless leader.

“I’m trying to,” she said calmly, trying to maintain an air of equality even with her bound hands and aching head. “I understand your actions, but you’re not at war. I did nothing towards your people.” She shot a glance at Gavin. “They attacked first, and I only acted in self-defense, nothing more.”

“You shot one of my men,” the captain countered quickly.

“But I didn’t kill him,” Clarke retorted just as fast, her calm breaking for a moment.

She saw the silent, quiet anger burning in Gavin and it was obvious the man, Trent, that she’d shot was particularly important to him. But then he surprised her.

“It’s true,” he said, his reluctance to side with her on this obvious.

“And she could have killed more than one of us if she wanted to,” Icarus added, speaking up for the first time since their arrival.

“So you may be peaceable,” the captain shrugged. “You’re only one person. What about the rest of your people?”

“They’ll listen to me,” Clarke assured him, lifting her chin.

Giving away the fact that she was in a leadership position probably wasn’t the smartest move, but it was one of the only ones she had. She hoped it was a heavy enough bargaining chip.

“And if they don’t?”

“That’s a risk both of us must be willing to take, isn’t it?” Clarke said quietly.

“I’m sorry.” The captain shook his head, stepping back.

Clarke’s hope plummeted as she realized that her window of opportunity was closing and there still wasn’t a common understanding between their peoples. She gritted her teeth in frustration, the bitter taste of failure threatening to choke her.

In that brief moment, she wished she had her own people with her again. She needed Kane’s natural diplomacy, her mother’s stubborn bravery, Jaha’s practicality, Bellamy’s solidity, Raven’s ferocity, and Indra’s warnings. Instead, she had to somehow channel all of those strengths at once, and she was failing.

“Praimfaya has passed!” she said, her voice rising with her desperation. “The Earth is survivable. You’re alive. Why can’t you see that you don’t have to just survive anymore? You can _live_.”

“I took an oath to secure the future of people,” the captain replied, his voice still the same measure of cool, immovable logic that made Clarke want to scream. “If there is anything, _anything_ that could prevent me from doing that, I will not hesitate to stop it, no matter what. Your people are a risk to my people that I am not willing to make.”

“So, what now?” Clarke challenged, stepping forward. Gavin moved for her, but she ignored her, all of her focus on the steely-eyed captain. “If anyone gets in your way, you’ll cut them down? You care about your people . . . well, I care about mine. If you don’t smarten up and somehow get in your head that we can live together because we’re _all that’s left_ , then you’re not trying to stop a war. You’re _asking_ for it.”

If he had decided that the best thing for his people’s survival was the end of Clarke and her people, then the survival of her people would mean the end of his.

“Lock her up,” the captain told Gavin, completely ignoring Clarke’s words. “We need information about her people, and unless we capture another one, she’s all we’ve got.”

“Like I’ll tell you anything,” Clarke scoffed, and this time she gave into the urge to spit at the captain.

The pale glob of wet rolled down the captain’s cheek, and he wiped it away with a faint smile.

“You’ll think otherwise in a few days,” he said.

Gavin came up then, and Clarke bit down her roiling anger. Her attempt at peace had been discarded without a second thought, and now all that mattered was the safety of her people – both those in the Nightblood village and those trapped in the Second Dawn bunker. She wanted to fight, but her chances were better with passive behavior.

For now.


	11. A Torturous Choice

The stars looked so small from Earth.

In space, it had been easy to believe that they were giant, fiery orbs burning endlessly in the dark; here they were nothing more than glittering specks dotting the black sky. Pretty lights from another world.

Icarus liked it that way. He liked the crunch of grass under his feet, and the way the ground dipped and rolled, nothing uniform and rigid about it. He liked the constants of life instead of the steady hum of machinery. He liked the heady rush he got whenever he took a deep breath – in space, he’d always felt lightheaded and faint from the thin, recycled air.

After they’d taken the grounder woman, Clarke, to a holding cell a few blocks down from the captain’s quarters, Icarus had been summoned to speak the captain about his actions during the scouting mission. He’d expected a worse punishment than he’d received; janitor shifts in lieu of guard duty. He was even still on the list for future groundwork, which he knew was because of his high Earth Skill scores.

“Hey,” Cas said, falling in stride with him as he hefted a sealed bucket of the solidified waste that built up in their water filtration systems. “Here you are. So . . .” – she winced dramatically at the putrid scent of the bucket in his hands – “uh, what did you do?”

“Apparently, I put everyone at risk with my, and I quote” – here Icarus deepened his voice in a fair impression of the captain’s – “reckless behavior. Like, what, am I just supposed to let Aldon shoot some kid because she _might_ be dangerous? She wasn’t even armed, and you should have seen her face, Cas – she was scared. Of us.”

They’d reached the shallow pit that already buzzed with happy insects who swirled up in a disgruntled flurry when Icarus dumped his bucket.

He felt like Earth had woken a rebellious streak in him. He’d always had his doubts and dislikes about their procedures in space, but they’d made sense up there. Trapped in the metal hull of their ship, strictness was necessary for survival.

But they weren’t trapped anymore.

“If I was the captain–” he started, his voice a dark mutter.

“Don’t,” Cas snapped in a harsh, frightened whisper. She glanced around instinctively, looking for officers. “Please, Icarus . . . don’t talk like that.”

“What we’re doing to those people is _wrong_ , Cas.”

“You were there,” Cas retorted, though he heard the hesitation in her voice. “She _shot_ Trent. She could have killed him.”

“But she didn’t,” Icarus said, shaking his head. “She was just protecting herself.”

 

~ ~ ~

 

They came for her a few hours later.

Clarke’s hands were still cuffed behind her back, her arms cramping from the position, and the ache in her temple now a mind-numbing throb that made her thoughts feel fuzzy. But she was absolutely aware of the dread that had sprouted in her stomach and now slowly crawled up her throat, hot and acidic.

No matter what they did to her, she had to stay strong.

“I admire your bravery,” the captain said, motioning for the two guards behind him to move forward and restrain Clarke. “But things will be easier for both of us if you cooperate. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“But you will,” she said with a soft, bitter laugh. “I know. I’ve been in your place once.”

If they killed her, then so be it. At least Madi was safe. She hoped the girl had made it to their village by now, and the others were long gone. At least those in the bunker had the rubble of Polis to guard them.

“Then you know I have no choice,” the captain replied.

 

***

 

She was brought into a medical facility, one that had obviously been prepared for this circumstance. A reclined metal chair sat in the middle of the bleach-scented room, thick canvas straps hanging off the edges.

Clarke’s heartbeat raced and she fought to keep her unease from showing as the two guards who had escorted her here removed the cuffs from her wrists. As they led her to the table, a short-haired woman with a faded-to-pink red cross stitched on the shoulder of her jumpsuit entered, a silver case in one hand. She watched as Clarke was strapped into the chair, her arms tingling with the return of circulation.

The woman glanced at the captain, who nodded curtly.

She set the case down on the metal table near the head of the chair and snapped the clasps open. She lifted to reveal an array of medical instruments – scalpels, syringes with long, glistening needles, hemostats, and even a tooth extraction clamp.

“All right,” the woman said, picking up a syringe and flicking the air bubbles out with a practiced ease. “Let’s get started.”

Clarke closed her eyes.

 

~ ~ ~

 

Screams woke Bellamy from the fitful sleep he’d fallen into.

After his short conversation with the colony’s captain, he’d been transferred into a larger cell along with a furious Murphy, a still-unconscious Wick, and a tense Monty.

“What the hell?” Murphy growled, getting to his feet from his position by the door. His hands flexed and unflexed into fists, the only visible sign of his anger. “That’s not good.”

“No,” Bellamy agreed, joining him by the door.

The screams rose and fell, echoing along the metal halls. They were faint, but the pain in them was apparent and unsettling.

“They said they wanted us alive, right?” Monty said in a low voice where he sat cross-legged in a corner, a yellowing bruise stretching over his cheek from where he’d hit the floor when he’d passed out.

“They don’t need all of us if the only thing keeping us alive is what we know,” Bellamy said. He swallowed hard as the screams continued, wishing he had the strength to smash through their cell walls and stop the poor woman’s pain.

For all he knew, it could have been Raven, Emori, or Echo who was screaming.

“It figures that as soon as we get a ticket to the ground, crap happens,” Murphy muttered. “Maybe we’re cursed. It’s the only explanation, right? Because we can’t even get _a fricking break_!”

The last words were shouted as Murphy attacked the door once more, slamming his shoulders, forearms, and feet against the immovable steel.

His curses and inarticulate rage mingled with the faint screams, the horrible orchestra mirroring the darkness churning inside Bellamy’s mind.

 

~ ~ ~

 

Icarus sat in the shadow of the _Gagarin_ , his knees drawn up to his chest. A hurricane of emotions milled inside of him, and he wasn’t sure which one made him decide to try and free their captives.

Maybe it was the horror at hearing the tortured screams of the grounder woman. Maybe it was the injustice of imprisoning the people they’d rescued. Maybe it was anger he felt towards his father’s blindness to change.

Maybe it was all of them.

Either way, after Cas had left him with his frustration at his people’s actions towards their fellow survivors, he had come here to try and clear his mind. And he had, which brought him to this moment.

 _Traitor_ , a small, scared part of him whispered. _If you free the prisoners, they’ll turn and kill all of you. Will you let that happen?_

“No,” he whispered, closing his eyes. “No, I _have_ to believe that we can be better.”

_If you get caught, your people will have no choice but to kill you._

That was Cas’ voice inside his head. Her warnings joined with his unshakeable doubt that this decision was the wrong one.

Another faint, strangled cry drifting out into the night air. That was his people’s doing. The grounder woman had hurt Trent, but only because he would have hurt her. What was happening to her now wasn’t in self-defense, no matter what Icarus’ father claimed.

It was wrong, and he was the only one who was willing to stop it.


	12. Ogeda

As she waited for darkness to come, Madi looked for a way into the camp. Her plan to rescue Clarke seemed more and more stupid with each passing hour, but the thought of leaving her caretaker never crossed her mind.

She was Clarke’s only chance.

When the shadows of night fell, Madi left her little clump of bushes and crept towards the stranger’s camp. They had lights on the metal wall they’d built, but the white beams only made the shadows darker.

Soon, she was by the wall, the quiet conversations of the guards drifting down to her ears. They were talking about her and Clarke.

“Captain says we might have an army after us soon. The prisoner still won’t talk, even after Doc’s been with her for a few hours now.”

“I saw Trent leaving medical; he said Mikeson let the girl escape.”

“Mikeson’s too damn soft. Remember when he argued against Cassia Reynold’s brother’s sentence?”

Mikeson was the one who had told Madi to run.

Moving away from the voices, she hugged the warm sides of the wall until she found the spot she’d observed from the bushes. It was close to the stranger’s ship, right next to a light, but there was a dip in the ground through which she’d seen past the wall. The thick, rough-edged grass hid the small hole, but hours of nothing but time to look at the camp had enabled Madi to see her way in.

The fit underneath was tight, and the fear of being caught without the ability to run made the space seem even smaller. But a minute of frantic wriggling, she found herself on the other side.

Madi had infiltrated the stranger’s camp.

 

~ ~ ~

 

As Icarus got to his feet, brushing grit and grass from the seat of his jumpsuit, his mind was racing a million, trillion directions. He’d decided to help the colony’s prisoners escape . . . but how? His demoted position was a large obstacle, but there were plenty more.

Still, he’d find a way. He had to. If he didn’t, the grounders would see his people as a true threat, not just the possibility of one. His father’s fears would be realized.

The whole situation seemed like an unbreakable paradox that, somehow, Icarus needed to find a way to break.

No pressure.

First, he had to find a way to talk to the prisoners and let them know he was on their side. Leaving the shadow of the _Gagarin’s_ towering hull, Icarus tried to appear as normal and non-traitorous as possible. Based on the way his heart was thundering in his chest, so fast he felt it pulsing in his throat, he wondered if that was even possible. Something moved in his peripheral vision, and he warily glanced in that direction.

A figure had just pulled itself under the camp’s wall, and when it straightened, Icarus saw the face of the young girl he’d protected in the woods. As soon as he saw her, she met his surprised gaze with her own. He saw her tense up, probably thinking he was going to attack.

“Wait!” Icarus hissed, lifting his hands in a show of peace. “I’m not going to hurt you, okay?”

She didn’t respond, but she didn’t move either, so that was a good thing.

“It’s Madi, right?” Icarus continued softly, glancing around to see if there was anyone nearby. Nothing. They were alone . . . for now. “My name is Icarus. I’m . . . I’m a friend.”

“You took Clarke,” the girl said, her soft tone heavy with accusation.

Guilt roiled thick and heavy in Icarus’ stomach. It was his fault Clarke was being tortured.

“I know,” he said. “And I’m sorry. But you’re here to help her, right?”

Madi nodded, her face pale in the night.

“Then we want the same thing.” Icarus stepped forward. “You with me?”

The girl nodded again.

 

~ ~ ~

 

The pain had finally, blissfully stopped.

Every nerve of Clarke’s body had felt like it was on fire, the burning of Praimfaya multiplied a million times over, never ending. She’d tried to be quiet, but that resolution had quickly faded away as the hours dragged by.

The echoes of her screams still lingered in the room, her throat raw. The lights in the ceiling were too-bright, stinging her eyes whenever she dared to open them.

“Where are the rest of your people?” That was the captain’s voice – cold and emotionless. It had haunted her through the agony, lurking in every corner of her thoughts. “How of you are there?”

Clarke pressed her mouth in tight, but even that triggered a minor burst of sharp, fiery pain. Whatever they’d injected her with most recently had been the worst, and while most of it had worn off, it wasn’t completely gone.

Maybe it never would.

“Dose her again,” the captain said.

No. Not again. If she could escape the inferno in the numbing dark of unconsciousness, she would have by now. But Clarke felt her heartbeat thrumming too-fast in her wrists and throat; there must be adrenaline or different kind of stimulant in the drugs that kept her awake and aware.

She wished they would use the knives; that was a pain she knew. But they hadn’t. Not yet.

“That was the last dose I brought with me,” the woman who administered every torturous injection said, her voice sounding tired but resolute. “I’d have to go to the storage units in Sector 9 to get more.”

“So get more.”

“Sir . . .”

Clarke cracked her eyes open at the hesitation in the woman’s voice. Was the silent servant feeling the weight of her recent actions? Could the captain be the only one who was heartless?

“Sir, most subjects would have cracked at this point. She hasn’t said a thing. I don’t think our current methods are going to work.”

“The injections are potent,” the captain responded, flicking his fingers dismissively. “No one can live through that much pain. Not forever.”

“If she remains silent and we keep dosing her, that will happen,” the woman said, folding her arms. “She’ll die, and we’d have to either go against her people blindly, or try to catch another, hopefully more submissive subject.”

Like hell. There was no way Clarke was letting that happen. She thought of Madi strapped into the metal chair in her place, fire burning through her veins and screams pouring from her mouth. The pain of that possibility was almost worse than the torture she had sustained.

“We don’t need to capture anyone else,” the captain said after a moment of silence. “There are the seven survivors.”

Clarke couldn’t control the gasp that slipped out of her mouth at that information. As soon as she heard herself, she knew that she’d given them leverage they hadn’t possessed before, but shock still ran cold and startling through her.

Could they . . . had they . . . were . . . it couldn’t be.

“So.” The captain bent over her line of view, a terrifying smile lurking at the corners of his impassive mouth. “You know of the ones in space.”

Clarke willed her features to remain smooth, but she felt the sting of relieved and horrified tears in her eyes. These _monsters_ had her friends, which meant she now had a weakness.

“We don’t have to hurt them, Clarke,” the captain said, reaching out to brush a sweaty strand of hair away from her forehead.

“And we don’t have to continue this right now,” the woman interrupted, her tone weary once more. “They’re not going anywhere, sir. Give her time; maybe in the morning she’ll be ready to talk.”

The captain nodded, stepping away from Clarke. She continued to stare up at her view of the glaring lights of the ceiling, hoping and dreading their possible departure. Because if they weren’t here, hurting her, then they could be hurting her friends.

They could hurt Bellamy.

“All right,” the captain agreed, and Clarke heard the snaps of the metal case closing over the gleaming instruments of pain. “If not, then we’ll bring in one of the seven. She’ll talk then.”

After they left, turning off the lights and leaving Clarke alone in the dark with her lingering pain and fresh despair, she couldn’t keep her walls up anymore. Her strength cracked and crumbled away, leaving her vulnerable and gutted as she began to sob.

The harsh, hollow sound of her grief echoed off the walls, replacing the echoes of her screams.

 

~ ~ ~

 

Madi squeezed under the wall again, once more on the outside – her land.

The plan she and Icarus had put together was shaky at its best, and impossible at its worst. But it was the only chance they had, and she couldn’t let that slip away.

Once she was inside the woods, Madi broke into a run, crashing through the dark underbrush with every bit of speed and stamina that she had. Dawn was a few hours away, and she had to have the rover ready when it came.

 _Ogeda_ , she’d told Icarus to say if his loyalty to her and her people was questioned. _Together_.

Because working together was the only way they were going to pull this off.


	13. Wonkru Divided

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigedasleng translation in end notes.

_6 years and 7 days after Praimfaya_

Graham stood up with an explosive curse, digging his fingers deep into the tangle of his hair.

He’d done what Octavia had asked and devoted every waking moment to testing all the angles and probabilities of their chances of escape. The odds still hadn’t changed: it was either generations of solitude underground until their systems eventually wore out or risk certain death by drilling through the wall. He was sure that the caves were there, but if they proved to be yet another roadblock, if they drilled and still couldn’t return to the surface, they _would_ die.

Graham wanted to leave the bunker. He’d lived on recycled air and mechanically-harvested water his whole life; he didn’t want to die in a cage. Not when there was a chance of freedom.

If he was alone, he would drill. But he wasn’t. There were over twelve hundred people whose lives were also at stake, and he wasn’t the type to take that kind of risk.

It wasn’t his call, however; it was the council’s. He was just an engineer – granted, he was the _chief_ engineer – and his job was to keep people alive, not decide their futures.

“You’ve been clocking the overtime like crazy the past few days,” Jeremy said, one of the few mechanics who’d made it on the list to survive in the bunker. He raised a curious eyebrow at Graham’s obvious distress. “Everything all right?”

“Huh? Oh. Yeah!” Graham pulled his fingers from his hair and attempted a cheerful smile. “Everything’s fine.”

He was a horrible liar, and everyone knew it.

“C’mon, man.” Jeremy shook his head, his eyebrows furrowing in concern and the beginnings of suspicion. “You can tell me.”

In other circumstances, Graham would tell him. Jeremy had a level head, he knew his stuff inside out, and was a damn good mechanic. He was no Raven Reyes, but he was a decent substitute. But the council had ordered secrecy of the highest level, and while Graham was a horrible liar, he wasn’t a traitor.

“I-I can’t,” he managed, looking away. The unchangeable results of his many tests glared up at him from his screen, and he swiped them away a moment later, locking the files with his thumbprint on the corner of the screen. “Sorry, council’s orders.”

“Oh. Council’s orders.” Jeremy’s voice grew bitter, and Graham remembered that the mechanic had lost his brother in the Praimfaya culling. “Right. Because every secret they keep is too important to share with _us_ – the ones who are affected by their decisions.”

“I’m sorry,” Graham repeated, stepping back from his screen. He couldn’t put off reporting back to Octavia any longer.

“Bullshit,” Jeremy snapped, his jaw tight and his tears shiny with angry tears. “Whatever this is, it isn’t good.”

“It . . .” Graham hesitated, torn between keeping to his promise of silence and letting _someone_ know that maybe, _maybe_ they had a chance of getting out of here. “It might be, Jeremy. That’s all I can say, but . . . just . . . don’t” – he held a hand as he continued to back towards Engineering’s exit door – “don’t talk about this, all right? Seriously. I’ll tell you everything as soon as I can, okay?”

“Yeah, whatever,” Jeremy muttered, and the doors slid shut on his upset features.

 

~ ~ ~

 

Jaha stood in front of their potential escape route, eyeing the thick, whitewashed wall.

Behind the ten-foot concrete lay a myriad of life-sustaining wires and pipes . . . and maybe freedom. If their survival behind this was certain, he wouldn’t hesitate to overrule the council and gather a group of those still loyal to him, even after the horrific events brought about by Alie, and bring their people to freedom.

For after everything he had been through, the survival of his people was still the most important. He would not hesitate to do whatever it took to keep them safe.

The walkie on his belt beeped with an incoming message.

“Jaha here,” he said, unhooking the device and accepting the waiting connection.

“Engineer’s got the results of his in-depth tests,” Kane said, his voice crackling with the static that was a constant problem in the bunker. “Octavia’s called a meeting in fifteen.”

“Got it,” Jaha said, already starting for the council room. “I’ll be there.”

 

~ ~ ~

 

“We’ve got a problem, _heda_ ,” said Luc, one of Octavia’s main guards. He was a few years older than her, with a mask of tattoos curling around his pale green eyes. “There’s a group of people gathering outside the council room.”

“What?” Octavia took a shallow, subtle breath of composure. This only meant one thing – someone had leaked about the possible drilling.

“Rumors grow quick,” Indra said from her position by Octavia’s side, Luc falling in on the side as the three of them made their way down the halls to the meeting she’d called. “The engineer learned of this from one of the first clans; the same person could have told someone else.”

Octavia had known of that possibility, but she had hoped Graham had been the only one to put two and two together. Since all had been quiet the last few days, her doubt had withered, but now it sprang up again, full-fledged. And there was also the very real possibility that one of those who had heard Graham’s findings could have slipped.

She knew how hope made someone foolish, so she wasn’t so much angry at the threat of chaos as she was sad. They’d made it this far by staying together; as Wonkru. Why couldn’t they continue like that? She was doing the best she could with the information that she had.

They all wanted the same thing – to live.

When they rounded the corner, they came upon a crowd thirty strong, all of varying backgrounds. Her first people weren’t the only ones desperate and ready to go home.

“Great,” Octavia muttered, as the crowd seemed to face her as one entity at her appearance. Her fingers twitched to hold onto the hilt of her sword, but that was the worst move to make in a situation like this. “They know.”

Jaha and Kane appeared around another bend, from the lower levels of the bunker. Judging by their expressions, they hadn’t been expecting the crowd and were just as surprised and confused as she was.

“What is this?” Kane asked of the crowd, striding forward.

A spokesman moved forward, and Octavia muttered a sharp curse – he was a mechanic, which meant he was from Graham’s sector.

“Heard the council is keeping another big, bad secret,” Jeremy Adams said, his voice laced with bitterness and past hurts. “Care to enlighten us?”

“The council was formed with the best future for you, for all of us, in mind,” Kane replied, glancing at Octavia, who nodded her agreement. For now, she would let Kane try to calm the people, since that was his strength and her weakness. “If there’s something we feel you need to know, we’ll tel–”

“What? Like you told us about gassing us and then putting all but the chosen few out to _die_?” Jeremy challenged, his voice rising. Murmurs of assent followed his words, and he seemed to gain confidence from the support. “The council doesn’t do what’s best for _all_ of us; you only do what’s best for _most_ of us.”

“If we didn’t, _all_ of us would be dead,” Jaha added coolly, fixing Jeremy’s angry gaze with his practical calm. “Would you have chosen that, instead?”

“I wouldn’t have chosen to let _them_ ” – Jeremy pointed an accusing finger at Indra – “take our people’s place.”

“Hey!” Octavia stepped forward, beating Indra to a reply. “We’ve all got our losses, Adams, so suck it up.”

“You killed to get your position,” Jeremy retorted, unfazed by her quiet anger and close proximity. He glanced at Kane and Jaha. “At least they were voted into position.”

“I’m trying really, really hard to see what Clarke saw in you to put you on the list,” Octavia replied quietly, now giving into the urge to rest her fingers on her sword hilt. “Because all I see is an ungrateful asshole.”

She knew Kane had given her a reproachful look, but obviously diplomacy wasn’t going to work. The only way people like Jeremy could be stopped was by prompt neutralization. It’s what had saved them during the riots in the first six months after Praimfaya.

“Fine,” Jeremy said, leaning back. He smiled, and suddenly Octavia felt the cold grip of fear around her heart at the unsettled glint in the mechanic’s eyes. “If they won’t tell us, then I will . . . they’re deciding whether we go home or not.”

It was right at that moment that Graham came around the corner, and Octavia whipped her gaze over to him. His eyes widened with alarm, and he shook his head frantically, desperately.

“Did you tell him?” she demanded.

“He’s too much of the council’s bitch to do that,” Jeremy scoffed.

“Is it true?” another one of the members of the crowd stepped forward, an ex-grounder with a grizzled beard and blue tattoos marching in stiff lines down his bare arms. He looked at Octavia, betrayal in his gaze. “Is there a way to go back that you didn’t tell us about?”

Octavia hesitated, and that was enough to spark anger in the crowd.

“Liars, all of them!” someone shouted. The crowd had suddenly grown in number, now about fifty in strength. “Why would you choose to stay down here?”

“We’ve been trapped here for over a year after you said we could leave!”

“The way out is through a wall!” That was Jeremy again, raising his voice over the rest. “They think we shouldn’t do it, that the risk is too much. I say, that’s a price worth paying if we can go home, isn’t it?”

“You idiots!” Octavia roared, trying to gather their attention. “If you drill through that wall and we _can’t_ go back, you’ll kill all of us!”

But her words were drowned out in the roar of assent to Jeremy’s words. The crowd turned on her and the gathered council members – Octavia, Indra, Jaha, Kane – as well as Graham and Luc. Octavia wanted to fight as her instincts told her too, but there had been enough bloodshed.

They were the last. If she killed anyone, she was killing the future of the human race.

But it seemed she didn’t have to do anything; they were doing it to themselves, and all she could do was let them restrain her.

“The people are the council now,” Jeremy told her, right before he locked them in the council room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heda = leader
> 
> The most common use of this word in the canonverse is in the context and title of Commander, but the most literal translation is leader. So Luc is referring to Octavia as their leader, not a Commander like Lexa was.


	14. Operation Treason

_3 days on the ground_

 

 

Icarus was buzzing with synthetic energy.

He hadn’t slept since last night, and while he was no stranger to 24-hour days, he didn’t have treason to plan and carry out. The adrenaline from that was probably enough to keep him awake and aware, but he couldn’t risk the chance of drowsiness. And so, he’d dug out two of his precious caffeine patches and slapped them onto his upper left arm, hiding the gray squares under the sleeve of his jumpsuit.

Madi was on her way to get what she called a rover, but what Icarus realized from her explanation of the device was a vehicle, and would be back by dawn for the second half of their patchwork plan. Which left him just a few hours to think up as harmless a diversion as he could, contact the prisoners, free them, and then get them outside the wall without being caught.

“Stay cool, stay cool,” he muttered to himself under his breath as he crouched in the confined space of the maintenance duct across the hall from Clarke’s cell. His father and Doc were still in there, and thankfully Clarke’s screams had stopped, but he wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing. “You got this.”

Hopefully.

Soon, the door opened and the captain and Doc stood in the hall. A silver case was held loosely in Doc’s hand, and she looked tired, but none of them had any blood on their clothes or skin.

Oh. _Shit_.

Icarus bit his tongue against the instinct to vocalize his curse as he realized why the screams had been so terrible. They’d used the punishment drugs on her, a clear liquid that brought unimaginable pain, forcing one’s nerves into override. It was what their colony used for lesser crimes instead of the death sentence, and one injection was usually enough to put someone back on the straight and narrow.

“Why are you doing this?” Icarus breathed, his gaze narrowing as he stared at the emotionless features of his father.

Any doubts he’d had about his reckless decision to free their prisoners was instantly erased in that moment. These people had done nothing wrong, and if they were aggressive in the future, Icarus wouldn’t blame them. His people had done nothing but wrong to them, even though he hoped that by freeing them before any further harm was done, potential war could be avoided.

So, in a way, he _wasn’t_ betraying his people. He was saving them.

“Maybe we should have started with the others first,” Doc said, her voice breaking past Icarus’ internal debate.

“Any information they have is six years old, which isn’t very useful,” the captain replied. “No, your plan is a good one. This will give her time to think about the choices we’ve given her, and the rest from pain will make the possible return of it hopefully more effective than it has been.”

“All right.” Doc blinked slowly, clearly lacking a caffeine patch for awareness. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Sleep well, Doc.”

And then they were gone.

Icarus waited a minute longer to make sure the hall was clear, and then he clambered out of the duct, replacing the vent afterwards. There was a camera in the corner, but he’d disabled the power to it from the duct before he’d climbed down to floor level.

When he came to the cell door, he heard sharp, ragged inhalations from the other side. Somehow, those quiet sounds seemed even worse than her screams had.

“ _Shit_ ,” Icarus muttered, mentally throwing even worse curses his father’s way as he jimmied open the electrical panel for the locking system. After reassembling a few wires, the door slid open onto the dim room.

Clarke quieted as he walked in, the door sliding shut behind him and leaving the two of them in semi-darkness. From the glimpse he’d had of her restrained form, her skin had been pale and slick with sweat, and her eyes puffy.

“I’m going to get you out of here,” Icarus whispered, his heart racing with the declaration. No matter his resolution or logical reasons, years of living under colony rules made the words seem horribly wrong.

“You.” Clarke’s voice was hoarse from screaming, and wet with tears. “You helped Madi get away.”

“You remember me,” he laughed humorlessly – a dry, short sound.

“Icarus,” she replied. “It’s a unique name. The boy who fell from the sky because he flew too close to the sun.”

“Yeah, my dad named me,” Icarus said, squinting at the buckles on the straps holding her onto the metal chair. They looked frustratingly difficult.

“Huh.” Clarke snorted, seeming to regain a semblance of strength by his presence and the hope of rescue that he brought with him. “That’s funny, because in the story, Icarus disobeyed his father.”

“It is, isn’t it?” he agreed wryly, a bitter smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. Oh, if she only knew how true his name was proving to be . . . well, hopefully without the whole falling to his death part.

“Why are you helping me?” she asked, her voice wary.

He didn’t question her caution. For all she knew, this was another part of her torture. Hell, he _was_ the one who had captured her, and look how that had turned out!

“ _Ogeda_ ,” he said, stumbling over the foreign syllables. “Madi told me to tell that to you.”

“Dammit,” Clarke whispered. “She was supposed to get herself to safety.”

“Well, if it’s any consolation, I probably wouldn’t be able to rescue you if she wasn’t helping me from the outside,” Icarus said.

His eyes were adjusting to the dark now, and he freed one of her hands, which she flexed and then reached up to the strap across her chest, her fingers fumbling with the buckle there.

“I didn’t want this to happen,” Icarus said in a rush, as he undid the buckle over her thighs. Now that he knew how to unlatch them, she would be free very soon. “What my people did to you . . . it’s not right. I’m sorry I couldn’t have done something sooner, but” – he sighed heavily – “as I’m sure you’ve noticed, it’s not particularly easy to go against the grain here.”

Clarke sat up then, reaching forward to help him with the straps across her legs.

“Your captain said that you’ve got seven of my people on board,” she said. “From space.”

“Yes.” Icarus stepped back as she stood up off the chair, her movements slightly stiff from her hours of nerve torture. “They’re in the main cellblock, a few levels down. Don’t worry, they’re safe for now. But my . . . our captain, he–”

“I know,” she said, her voice tense and worried. “So, what now?”

“Since they’re in the main cells, they’ve got guards,” Icarus explained. “I can handle them, but I need to set the diversion first.”

 

 

_6 years and 9 days after Praimfaya_

 

 

Clarke wanted to run out the door and straight to her captive friends. She wanted to see their faces and bask in the reality of their return. But that had to wait. She had to free them first.

The young guard, Icarus, stood in front of her, the only ally she had. Even if she didn’t want to trust him, she had no choice.

“So, handle them,” she told him. “I’ll be the diversion.”

“They’ll kill you,” Icarus warned.

Clarke smiled mirthlessly at him. His people had threatened her, her blood-sister, and now the ones she’d been without for six long years. Icarus didn’t know that in freeing her, he’d released her rage and given it a target.

“They’ll have to catch me first,” she said.

 

~ ~ ~

 

The air crackled hot with electricity by the time Madi reached the rover. Wind rustled through the treetops, stiff and chilly. As she caught her breath for a moment, she tasted ozone on her tongue.

A storm was coming.

Normally, Madi would have known to find shelter from the wild, dangerous weather. Now, she laughed with dark amusement as she got behind the wheel of the rover and started the engine, the yellow headlights cutting through the restless forest.

Today, the weather was her friend.


	15. The Storm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigedasleng in end notes.

For one moment, Bellamy didn’t recognize the dull, rumbling noise that shook through their cell walls. His first thought was that, for some reason, the colonists were taking off. But the ship hadn’t moved; there was only that sound, reminiscent and thunderous . . . oh.

“Is that . . . thunder?” Wick said, tilting his head.

The corner of Bellamy’s mouth lifted in a wry humor that was also touched with sadness. He had forgotten what thunder sounded like, so used to the silent hum of space. Even though he was trapped once again by metal walls, the closure felt . . . normal. Thinking about the vastness of Earth was refreshing, but also alien once more.

“I wonder if there’s still black rain,” Murphy drawled, idly inspecting the raw bruises on his knuckles from his blows to the unmarred door. “I hope so. I hope these assholes get their faces melted off.”

“Black rain isn’t acid rain,” Monty corrected a moment later, clearly unable to let Murphy dwell in ignorance. “It’s possible there’s still enough radiation in the atmosphere to allow for random irradiated storms, but I doubt it. It’s really only a precursor to–”

“Thanks, professor,” Murphy interrupted, rolling his eyes. “I get the point.”

The only thing Bellamy had on his mind was what had happened to make the screams stop. He didn’t want to think about the possibility of death – not yet – but it lurked in the edges of his thoughts, undeniable and inescapable. Whoever it was, it only gave more proof to the fact that the colonists were, for now, the enemy.

“I’m starving,” Wick muttered, tipping his head back against the wall where he was sprawled almost lazily in a corner. “We’ve been, what, almost two days in this room? And no one’s come to feed us, let alone check on us.”

“They don’t need to walk in to get a look-see,” Murphy said, raising his hand and pointing at the ceiling above Wick. “Wait for it . . . now!”

Bellamy looked up just in time to see a small red light flashed on, ominous in its unobtrusiveness. Ah, of course. They were already being watched.

Another burst of thunder sounded, this time its power felt as a miniscule tremor in the walls. A shiver rolled up Bellamy’s spine at the sensation – awe at the natural ferocity of Earth, and unease at the quiet that followed. The silence where the screams had once ruled was oppressive, and not even the thunder could shake the feeling of dread that sat cold and heavy in Bellamy’s stomach.

 

~ ~ ~

 

The sky was bruise colored when Madi stopped the rover just inside the tree-line of the forest. The ominous yellow-green tint to the air cast the stranger’s camp in an ugly light, like the truth of it was laid bare to the world. Thunder rolled overhead, and the strength of it rattled her bones.

The oncoming storm was rising quickly, and Madi knew it was going to be a nasty one.

Taking a deep breath, she suddenly accelerated, the rover shooting out from the cover of the forest and speeding towards the stranger’s camp. Wind battered at the metal sides, jerking the wheel beneath her hand. Madi had to keep a tight, strong grip on the steering to stay on course, which was a collision with the camp’s gates.

“I will not be afraid,” she said, just before the rover crashed into the gates.

 

~ ~ ~

 

The harsh wind battered at Clarke as she left the colonist’s ship through the small hatch Icarus had given her instructions to. The morning sky was dark and angry, the night shifting into day with merely a dirty gray light to mark the difference. The building storm was sudden, but that was Earth now.

At least they would have a natural cover during their escape.

 _“Madi’s going to come through the gates with your vehicle_ ,” Icarus had told her. _“I was going to set a timed explosion near the water filtration systems to draw the guards’ attention, but keeping them from stopping her is up to you now.”_

 _“What are you going to do?”_ Clarke had retorted, arching a cautious eyebrow at his current lack of interaction.

Freeing her had been enough to give him the benefit of the doubt, but not enough to give her confidence in him. Or his promise of help.

The pale young man had taken a deep breath before saying, _“I’m going to get your people out, arm them, and hope we don’t kill anyone on the way out. What my people have done is wrong, no doubt there, but”_ – he’d hesitated again, and Clarke understood the turmoil he must have been facing at going against his people – “ _death will make it harder for them to change their minds about you.”_

It was a solid point, and that was the moment that Clarke had decided to cast all her faith on him. Even if she really didn’t have a choice, she still had felt confident enough in this unexpected chance.

As she made her way through the camp, her presence was easy to hide in the brought by the angry weather. The colonists moved orderly, but there was still a buzz of panic lying heavy in the air, dulling their awareness of anything but the oncoming storm.

Like Clarke.

The wind had picked up even more in the few minutes she’d been outside, knocking over a row of the stiff, white tents. The pale sides collapsed when they hit the ground, causing a flutter of chaos in the nearby colonists. Grass and dust spun through the air, fluttering and stinging.

The gate was just a hundred or so yards away when Clarke heard the speeding hum of a rover. The metal pieces crumpled outwards as the battered front of her rover pushed through, Madi’s face pale behind the bent bars of the windshield.

Alarms sprang to life, mixing with the droning howl of the wind.

And that’s when Clarke attacked.

 

~ ~ ~

 

The weight the guns Icarus had stolen from the armory dug the strap of his pack into his shoulder, a physical ache that grounded him in reality. Otherwise, it would have been oh-so-easy to think that the last few hours had been a dream; that he would wake up and everything would be back to normal.

Muffled, rolling sounds came intermittently from outside, like depressing thrusters or enormous gunshots. They rattled through the metal floor under his feet, strange and powerful.

That couldn’t be whatever diversion Clarke had done . . . could it?

He had to stay focused on his own task. She was counting on him to save her people; he was her only hope. And his own people’s future rode on him pulling off this madcap rescue mission if they wanted to have peace without the stain of blood on their hands.

A moment later, he rounded the corner and came upon Gavin and another member of their scouting mission, Ford, on guard at the Ring survivor’s cells.

Oh, damn.

“Mikeson,” Gavin said in greeting, his fingers resting casually on the handle of his holstered pistol. Like he thought Icarus was as much a threat as the prisoners were behind their steel doors. He was, but no one knew that . . . yet. “What are yo–”

As Gavin had started talking, Icarus had taken out the two sleeping patches he’d stolen from the medical supplies before heading to the armory. He then moved forward and slapped one on Gavin’s hand, his block officer’s eyes widening in realization a moment before they sagged shut.

He crumpled to the ground a moment later, his gun clattering from his limp fingers.

“What the hell?” Ford said, backing away.

He went for his pistol, the strap of his holster buckled over the handle, unlike Gavin’s had been. That moment of time was enough for Icarus.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered, just as he put the second patch on the underside of Ford’s wrist.

Stepping over the limp bodies, he undid the lock on the first cell. He hadn’t been able to disable the cameras inside, so once he opened this door they had maybe a minute or two before the alarm sounded and officers would be deployed. His fingers shook as he twisted the last wire into place, and his heart pounded faster than he thought it could but, so far, his plan was working.

 

~ ~ ~

 

The surprise at her appearance was what enabled Clarke to bring down the first guard within a few seconds. They weren’t seasoned warriors, raised and trained to defend instinctively; they were still new to the true battle.

Using the confusion caused by Madi’s arrival, she sprinted past the rover. Using the force of her momentum to propel herself up the few rungs of the makeshift ladders used to reach the narrow walk on the top of the wall, she rolled forward over one shoulder, her feet swinging out and knocking the closest guard off balance.

As he fell, Clarke got to her feet and brought her elbow slamming into the side of his jaw. The force of her blow and the downward weight of his own fall knocked the guard out cold.

“ _Madi!_ ” Clarke yelled, moving forward to the other guard. “ _Sis ou kamp roun en dou._ ”

 _“Ai get in,_ ” Madi hollered back, her words blown away by the wind as she gunned the rover further into the camp.

Even during her focus on the fight, Clarke felt a pang of fear at the thought of the young girl in danger. She hadn’t wanted that future for Madi, and yet here it was.

“ _Ste yuj, ai strikon_ ,” she murmured.

The next moment, she knocked away the second guard’s gun as he went to point it at her head. Twisting his wrist with one hand and earning a grunt of pain from him, Clarke brought her other fist crashing into his throat. He choked and bent forward, the distraction from his injury giving her the time to finish twisting the gun away. When she had it in her hands, she brought the heavy handle into the side of his head, sending him down just like his companion.

The alarms continued to sound, pulsing and shrieking.

Clarke whipped her gaze around, taking stock of her surroundings and the situation. The once-organized camp was in full panic now, people stumbling out of wind-collapsed tents only to scramble away from the path of the rover as Madi drove towards the open ship door. Her success was the key to their escape from camp, just like Icarus’ success was the key to any chance of escape at all.

Because Clarke wasn’t leaving this place without her people. She wasn’t letting Bellamy go a second time.

A guard ran towards the wall, rifle at the ready against his shoulder. Clarke sank to one knee behind the meager protection of the wall as she aimed for another leg shot. She wasn’t a friend of these people, but she wasn’t going to kill unless necessary. It was both a choice driven by the fact that there were less than two thousand humans left and that minimal deaths would be a potential bargaining chip if peace ever became a possibility.

As she shot another guard, this time in the foot, Clarke sent a desperate plea to those involved in this rescue.

_Hurry up._

 

~ ~ ~

 

Raven Reyes was _pissed_.

She had been for the past 24-hours, her anger ripening as time passed and they were still locked up as damn prisoners. And in gender-segregated cells, too, which meant she hadn’t seen Wick in over two days.

Sure, they’d had their rough patches through the years, but living on the Ring meant that there wasn’t really anywhere to go. He’d been her rock and anchor, and she’d grown used to his constant presence. Hell, she even missed his _terrible_ jokes.

But then, almost two days later without sign or sound of their captors except the constant, five-second-interval blinking of an online security camera, the door opened.

Echo was moving forward before the door was even halfway open, tackling the colonist on the other side to the ground. Emori and Raven were right behind her, though Raven’s bad leg meant that she was the last out of the cell. She went for the young man’s dropped bag as Emori joined Echo in restraining the colonist.

“Stop, wai–” he protested, before his voice was cut off by Echo jamming her forearm against his throat.

“ _Shof op, skai rounon,_ ” she spat. While Raven’s anger always burned fiery, Echo’s was reminiscent of her old clan, Azgeda, in that it was dangerously cold. “Where are the others?”

“Jackpot!” Raven exclaimed, upon opening the fallen bag and picking up one of the guns inside.

And then she noticed the two fallen guards a few feet down, her awareness stretching its muscles and springing to life now that their original dash for freedom had paid off so far. If they weren’t on duty, and this colonist was here with a bag of guns . . .

“Let him talk,” she said to Echo, and then glancing over at Emori. “And watch those two. We don’t want them waking up to crash the party.”

When Echo leaned back and the face of the colonist was revealed, Raven recognized him as the young pilot who’d returned contact to their beacon in the Ring. Well, how about that. Looked like Icarus Mikeson was both a hell of a pilot _and_ a rebel against his people.

“You got two seconds,” she told him. “Talk fast.”

“ _Ogeda_ ,” Icarus said, his gaze flicking between her and Echo. “That . . . that’s what I was supposed to tell you if, ah, if you didn’t trust me.”

“Where did you hear that?” Echo said, her tone the only thing she needed to show that she wasn’t going to accept anything but the truth. “That’s not one of your words.”

“Which means he’s met one of our people,” Raven added quickly, her mind racing. Their people were out there. She looked back at Icarus. “Who did you meet?”

“There are two of them I’ve seen,” he replied quickly. “A girl – Madi. And a woman named Clarke.”

Raven’s mind went blank. Her first thought was to laugh, and then to pinch herself to see if this was just some crazy, oxygen-deprivation dream. That was a thought. Maybe the seven of them were still on the Ring, the systems had shorted, they were dying, and the past two days were the last working neurons in her brain teasing her with impossible hopes.

Like meeting four hundred Nightblood survivors in space. Like hitching a ride with them down the ground, only that they hadn’t stepped outside yet; she was still surrounded by metal walls. Like being drugged.

Like Clarke surviving the inferno of Praimfaya.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Clarke: Madi! Help out at the door!  
> Madi: I know!  
> Clarke: Be strong, my little one.
> 
> Echo: Be quiet, sky person.


	16. Reunion

Alarms blared to life, their monotonous warning ringing painfully loud against the metal walls of the ship.

“That’s not good,” Wick said, right as the door opened.

Bellamy had been expecting pale, expressionless colonists, and so the sight of Raven, Emori, and Echo standing in the hall caught him off guard. They had guns in their hands, and the shuttle pilot was with them.

Icarus. If it was a different place, different time, Bellamy would have taken a moment to comment on the prophetic quality of the kid’s name.

“We’ve got to hurry,” Icarus said, holding his gun out to him.

At the same time, Raven blurted out, “Clarke’s alive.”

“ _What_?” Bellamy shook his head slowly, his gaze darting between the faces in front of him. “Raven . . . I–”

He’d misheard her; that was the only explanation. Clarke was gone, and had been for six long, lonely years. Whatever troubles he faced in his future, he now faced alone.

“It’s true,” Icarus said, stepping forward and practically shoving the gun into Bellamy’s grip. “And we really have to go, okay? The alarms mean that . . .”

His words trailed off into muffled, unintelligible sounds that blended with the whining alarms, the chaos mirroring Bellamy’s sudden tangle of emotions and thoughts.

Clarke.

Alive.

Here.

His fingers curled around the cold, heavy handle of the gun with familiarity. They were jogging down a hall now, leaving their cells behind as they followed someone. They were escaping the Eligius colony.

Clarke was alive.

How?

“Come on!” someone yelled, stirring Bellamy into a run.

His feet pounded against hollow metal. His breath came in sharp, short bursts of exertion. The floor of the ship shook, accompanied by the rumbling growl of thunder outside.

Clarke was here.

How? He’d left her behind, too far from any shelter against the destruction of Praimfaya. But, somehow . . . she’d survived. She was alive.

After six years of believing her lost to him, he was going to see her again.

 

~ ~ ~

 

_We got this._

Those three words looped in Icarus’ head, a mental chant in time to the pulsing alarms and the pounding of his feet. His heart ran to a different beat, one of borderline hysteria at the fact that he was really, truly going against everything he’d been raised with.

Any minute now, a block of guards would come around the corner. Any minute, _something_ would happen to bring all his actions to nothing.

No.

_We got this._

“Icarus?”

It wasn’t guards who saw them first. It was Cas.

Her eyes widened with understanding when she saw the Ring survivors behind him, matching his association with them to the alarms.

“I have to do this,” he told her.

And then they were moving forward again, racing the clock on their chance of making it out of here.

_We got this._

~ ~ ~

 

Thick, jagged lightning cut across the sky, blinding Madi as she drove the rover through the camp. Every second whipped by, details leaping out at her in crystalline clarity. Her pulse sounded like war drums in her ears, overriding the crashing thunder.

She’d never driven the rover this fast. The steering wheel jumped and tugged in her grip, the wind and speed pulling the vehicle in two different directions that constantly shifted. Madi was sure she was going to crash, that one of the strangers would collide with the metal frame or she’d get stuck in one of the billowing tents cast about by the fierce wind.

The storm was almost fully upon them, spattering gusts of rain hitting against the thick plastic of the rover’s barred windshield. The drops hissed on contact, a flash of lightning showing little tendrils of steam rising from where they hit.

Screams started soon after as the rain fell down in rippling, rolling sheets. The chaos of the stranger’s camp multiplied as the figures started running en masse for the ship . . . which meant there would be even more people to stop the rescue.

“ _Spichen_ ,” she muttered, her curse drowned by another deafening clap of thunder.

The crowd choked the path to the door, blocking her from those counting on her.

 

~ ~ ~

 

Raven’s leg ached, the throbbing pain in tune with the racing of her heart. Adrenaline was keeping the worst of it away, but it had been six years since she’d needed to physically push herself like this.

Icarus moved with the instinctive sense of direction only earned through a lifetime of living on the ship, but she wished there was a shortcut they could slide down past the narrow stairs and creaking ladders bumpy with years of welded repairs.

In reality they’d only been moving for maybe five minutes, but with the time limit and possible confrontation with guards, it felt like hours.

And then finally, _finally_ Icarus said that they were on the last level. The sound of thunder and the whistling howl of wind were noticeable now, even over the still-blaring alarm. Strips of thick, translucent material hung across the wide exit of the ship, flapping wildly from the force of the obvious storm outside.

The glimpses Raven got of the skies outside wasn’t pretty – dark clouds intermittently laced with lightning, and the pale, rippling blur of torrential rain.

Suddenly, colonists began streaming into the ship, their hair plastered against their heads and their faces red and steaming. Cries of pain and confused terror echoed off the metal walls, and their little group instinctively paused in their dash for freedom.

“Great,” Murphy drawled, his voice tight despite the sarcastic note. “Now what?”

 

~ ~ ~

 

“I thought you said black rain wasn’t a possibility,” Bellamy said, glancing at Monty.

They were hidden behind crate of supplies near the back of the ship’s ground level, but with the crowd of drenched, chaotic colonists kept growing between them and their only hope of escape.

“I . . . I don’t think it’s black rain,” Monty replied, frowning in concentration. “They’re scared, but it doesn’t seem like the rain is continuing to burn them. I think” – he closed his eyes for a moment – “the rain is just really, really hot.”

“Makes sense, what with the new super-shot of radiation the atmosphere got in Praimfaya,” Wick agreed, his arm around Raven’s waist, helping her move with her bad leg. “It will hurt like hell, but we’d live.”

Bellamy looked over at Icarus. He was looking out over the influx of his people into the ship, his features drawn with worry.

“If we move fast, right now,” Bellamy said quietly, “we should have the element of surprise. There aren’t any guards here yet, are there?”

“No, but there will be any minute,” Icarus replied tersely. His jaw clenched as he swallowed tightly. “Just . . . please don’t . . . try not to kill anyone, okay? These are still my people.”

“Of course,” Bellamy agreed, reaching out and laying a hand on Icarus’ shoulder. The colonist looked up at him, his dark eyes conflicted. “Trust me; the ground’s seen enough death.”

Thoughts of Clarke pushed to the front of his mind again, but he couldn’t dwell on them. She’d been waiting for him for six years, while he’d been mourning her. And now, soon, all of that would be in the past. And that would only happen if they could get out of the ship.

“All right,” he said, turning to the rest of them. “We’ve got to move fast. Take advantage of their surprise. The only goal is to get out that door as quickly as we can.”

“And if they try to stop us?” Echo asked, the only one of their group without a gun . . . but then, she was just as deadly without weapons.

“Fighting them is only going to make them think we’re the enemy even more,” he replied. “Don’t shoot unless absolutely necessary.”

“Got it,” Murphy said, squaring his shoulders. He shared a quick glance with Emori before he nodded at the waiting door. “Let’s do this.”

 

~ ~ ~

 

Icarus was glad for the foreign panic that ran through the colony. Without it, he doubted they would have made it this far.

As they shouldered through the crowd, surprise came slowly to the faces they passed. The closer they got to the whipping weather guard across the door, the thicker the scent of hot metal and prickling electricity became. Short gusts of air slipped through the door, and the world Icarus saw outside seemed alien to the one he knew.

Instead of brightening sunshine and pale clouds, the skies were dark and angry. Water fell in a blinding downpour, blocking his view of the rest of the camp. So this was what a storm looked like – it was both terrifying and exhilarating.

They were just a few yards from the doors when the guards arrived.

 

~ ~ ~

 

“Hey, Bellamy!” Murphy’s voice cut through the pandemonium of the crowd and the storm outside. “We got company!”

A moment later a group of guards came into view on one side of the room, their attention on their escaping prisoners.

“Keep moving!” Bellamy shouted. “They’re going to have to come to us; there’s too many civilians in the way.”

Just a few more feet and then they would be outside. The storm would fight for them, and Bellamy saw the achingly familiar headlights of a rover pull up next to the ship’s metal ramp. His heart squeezed with hope.

Clarke.

 

~ ~ ~

 

Five guards had been disabled by Clarke before the rain fell, the boiling-hot deluge forcing her assailants to seek for shelter. Clarke tugged the hood of her jacket up from its holding pocket on the back of her collar, but the leather was a flimsy guard against the pounding storm. In a few minutes her skin was steaming from the heat of the radiated water – not strong enough to be black rain, losing the acidic burn, but the scalding temperature was bad enough by itself.

As soon as she saw the glow of the headlights, she would make a dash from her position on the wall.

Clarke lifted her head higher, gun at the ready. The rain blocked her view of the ship, only a faint black shape in the dark of the storm.

She wondered if the guards had left; the wounded ones were gone, most likely helped away by their companions. The rain kept falling in torrential gusts, the wind whipping the steaming water into her face. Tears sprang reflexively to her eyes from the pain, and she blinked them away as she squinted through the rain.

As soon as she saw the glow of the headlights, she would make a dash from her position on the wall.

“Hurry up, Madi,” she muttered anxiously.

 

~ ~ ~

 

Madi had pulled up to the ship’s door, her fingers white-knuckled on the steering wheel. Rain pounded on the roof of the rover, matching the beat of her heart. If anyone dangerous braved the storm to attack her, she was easy prey.

But the figures that suddenly dashed down the metal ramp, heads bent against the boiling rain, weren’t enemies. Madi recognized one of the figures as the stranger who was helping them, and she breathed out an explosive sigh relief.

Her relief was quickly chased when more figures followed, lightning glinting off of the guns in their hands.

“Come on!” Madi shouted, and then ducked as a bullet ricocheted off of the side of the rover, the crack of it masked by a following crash of thunder.

The sound of the storm intensified as the back doors were wrenched open, and the soaked group piled in. Madi darted a glance in the rear view mirror at their faces, wondering who was who from the stories Clarke had told her.

She recognized Bellamy right away, though, his dark hair wet across his dark eyes.

“Where’s Clarke?” he asked, the rover doors slamming shut a moment later.

“Go!” someone else yelled.

“She’s at the gate,” Madi said, shifting the rover into reverse and tearing away from the ship a moment later.

 

~ ~ ~

 

Shots rang out behind them as the small girl gunned the rover away from the ship and into the storm.

Bellamy crouched in the space between the front seats, his fingers gripping the fading canvas sides for balance as the vehicle bounced and jolted. He couldn’t see further than a few feet out of the windshield, thanks to the wind-tossed rain and dark skies. It was almost as dark as midnight, thanks to the storm.

And then a figure came into view, blonde hair visible in a flash of lightning.

Clarke.

She dashed towards them, her boots splashing in the puddles quickly gathered from heavy downpour. The girl at the wheel slammed on the rover’s brakes, tossing a frantic glance over her shoulder.

“Open the doors!” Bellamy said, turning around to help Clarke in.

A gunshot cracked in the silence between thunderclaps, but the smaller sound seemed absolutely deafening.

 

~ ~ ~

 

Clarke was just a few yards from the rover, her mad dash almost ended, when she heard a gunshot to her left. A moment later, searing pain ripped through her stomach, and her legs gave out.

Steaming mud met her face, and she tasted dirt. Everything was suddenly blurry, her whole world centered on the sharp, burning ache in her stomach. The sounds of the storm faded away, turning into nothing but a dull roar in the back of her mind.

And then arms came around her, lifting her up. Clarke’s eyes fluttered open onto familiar features softened by her dimming sight.

Bellamy.

“Hey, princess,” he said, or maybe she imagined it.

It didn’t matter. The only thing that did matter was that he was real and solid.

He was here.

And then he wasn’t, as the pain took over and she sank down into the waiting darkness.


	17. The New Council

_6 years and 8 days after Praimfaya_

Graham sat on the couch behind the council room’s desk, his elbows resting on his knees. His head was slumped down between his knees, his fingers laced across the back of his neck.

This was his fault. They’d been imprisoned because he couldn’t keep his mouth shut for five more damn minutes. If he hadn’t given into the urge to let Jeremy have a little hope, they wouldn’t be stuck here.

“Hey.”

The couch cushions sank down as Octavia sat next to him, the shift and slide of her leather clothes so different from the synthetic linen of his wardrobe. He turned his head, glancing at her through the tangle of hair that had once again fallen into his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he said for probably the millionth time.

“I’m not mad at you,” Octavia said, lifting one shoulder in a dismissive gesture. “I’m mad at Adams for being an ass about the situation, but then again I really can’t blame him.”

“He’s going to kill us all,” Graham muttered, straightening up and folding his arms. He started resolutely at the locked door of the council room, unable to meet Octavia’s practical gaze. She _should_ be angry at him; he’d broken the trust she’d put in him.

“Maybe,” she agreed. “Or maybe he’ll be the one to save us. The only thing we know is that there’s a chance, and obviously he’s willing to take the risks that go along with it.”

“Would you have drilled through?” he asked, glancing at her again.

The smudged black paint around Octavia’s eyes made the blue of them seem an unreal, vivid color. When she shifted her position, leaning forward to rest her forearms on her knees, he saw the lean, deadly muscles move fluidly under her paling tan skin.

Octavia Blake was a warrior, and even though she carried the burden of leadership, it didn’t really seem to fit her. Like she had proved with her interaction with Jeremy, she was a fighter. She had Kane and Jaha for the delicate, political parts of leadership.

“I don’t know,” she finally replied, flicking her gaze over to him.

“You shouldn’t beat yourself up,” Jaha said, meandering over from where he had obviously been listening in. He placed a hand on Graham’s shoulder, a comforting gesture that lacked the warmth Graham thought it should have. “Something like this wouldn’t have stayed hidden forever. We’ve simply skipped past the years of lying, which you should be thankful for. A secret like this one would have been–”

“You don’t know what would’ve happened,” Octavia interrupted tersely.

Jaha lifted his hands up in a gesture of peaceful neutrality as he stepped back.

“Seven years later and he still acts like the chancellor,” she muttered, huffing a disdainful laugh as she watched Jaha begin a quiet discussion with Kane. “But, he’s also right about a lot of things, including this.”

“Yeah,” Graham agreed, pushing his hands into his hair and sweeping the wild mess out of his eyes. He held his hands against the back of his head, frowning thoughtfully up at the ceiling. “It still sucks.”

Octavia snorted. “You can say that again.”

Suddenly, the lights flickered.

“Damn it,” Kane said, going over to the door and pounding on the thick, bulletproof glass. “Hey! Look, we all want to go home. But if you follow Jeremy’s way, you could doom us all!”

“They’re not going to listen to you, Marcus,” Indra said quietly from where she stood by a corner, Luc at her side. “Their hope is too loud for them to hear the voice of reason.”

The lights flickered again.

“He’s drilling,” Jaha said, glancing up at the sputtering panels.

 

~ ~ ~

 

Abby was in the middle of injecting an ex-grounder woman with her monthly vitamin-D shot, when the power cut out.

“What the hell?” Jackson said from the other side of the room where he had just finished giving the woman’s husband with his own vitamin shot. “That’s . . .”

“That’s not supposed to happen,” Abby said, pulling the needle out of the woman’s arm and setting it to the side, the syringe finding the counter after a moment of searching. “Something’s wrong.”

Dim lights kicked on a few moments later, white-blue and darker than the regular lights. They were part of the bunker’s backup system, a separately connected generator and control panel than the normal life support.

“Go back to your room,” she told the couple, gesturing for them to leave the med-bay. “We’ll let you know what’s going on as soon as we can.”

After they had left, Jackson looked up from where he’d tried using the inset wall comms.

“Looks like only the basic systems are running,” he said, shaking his head. “Emergency lights and air.”

“Stay here,” she said, starting for the door. “Someone needs to be in medical in case this means we’ve got injured people.”

“Abby, wait!” Jackson took a hesitant step forward, unease flickering across his features. “What are you going to do?”

“Find out what the hell is going on,” she replied.

 

***

 

When Abby saw the two ex-grounders standing guard by the closed council room doors, the warnings that had been building in her stomach now morphed into true dread. These weren’t members of Octavia’s guard, or the bunker militia, either.

“Hey,” she said, walking up to them. “What the hell is going on?”

“We’re going home,” one replied, his smile half-hidden behind his grizzled beard. “One of your people found a possible door through old caves behind one of the bunker walls.”

“What?” Abby said incredulously. Doubtfully. “No, it has to be a rumor. Please, is Marcus in there?”

“Our rulers thought we should stay in this prison,” the other guard spoke up, the scars on his face marking him as ex-Azgeda.

If they had locked up the council, that meant there was something about this door that was dangerous. Or at least, enough of a delicate situation to have required secrecy, since Marcus hadn’t said anything to her. She understood the need for silence, especially in a situation like theirs in the bunker, but she couldn’t ignore the quiet sting of betrayal.

She trusted Marcus, so why hadn’t he trusted her with this knowledge?

“Can I see them?” she asked, focusing on the important issue before her, adding when she saw the hesitation her question brought, “Look, I just want to see if my husband is okay. Is that a problem?”

“Ten minutes,” the bearded one said, unlocking the door. “Or you stay in there, too.”

“Thank you,” Abby replied, slipping through the half-open door.

 

~ ~ ~

 

Octavia got to her feet as the door opened, the guards letting Abby in.

Of course. If there was anyone who could manage to convince anyone, it was her. The fact that Abby Kane was the head medical officer meant that she had almost more weight than Octavia’s status; people listened to the one who could stitch them up.

“What’s going on out there?” Octavia asked, even though Abby had eyes only for Marcus at the moment.

“Power’s out,” Abby replied, once she had satisfied herself that everyone in here was unhurt. “The men outside the door said you discovered a way out.” She looked back at Marcus, and this time a hint of accusation was in her voice. “Is that true?”

“It might be,” he replied soberly. “All we know is that Graham discovered a _possible_ exit. But it’s behind the wall where most of our system connections are, whic–”

“Which means the bunker life support would be compromised if you drilled through,” Abby finished, closing her eyes. “ _Damn it_ . . . they’re doing it anyways, aren’t they?”

“Well, we wouldn’t be locked up if that wasn’t the case, now would we?” Jaha drawled.

“And the power would still be running,” Graham added, still sitting on the couch.

“Would there have been a way to carefully drill through?” Abby asked. “Take our time, divert the systems, something like that?”

“Maybe,” Graham started.

“Obviously, they didn’t give us the time to figure that out,” Octavia said tightly.

Jeremy was hand-picked by Clarke, so he should have been smart enough to think of these options on his own. Instead, his anger at the council and the culling six years ago ruled his actions, going on feelings instead of logic.

In the bunker, that was the only way to survive.

 

~ ~ ~

 

The members of the council had been Jeremy’s only opposition.

As the news of their escape spread rapid-fire through the bunker, his followers swelled. It was like a rising wave – unstoppable.

“We can’t have everyone pressing in on us as we drill,” Hank Eccles, Jeremy’s fellow mechanic said.

He was the first one Jeremy had gone to with the news he’d discovered after hacking into Graham’s secret files, and the one who had stormed out of the control room, ready to take on that damned council.

“ _We deserve to know something like this,_ ” he’d said, when Jeremy had followed him. “ _I’m not going to just sit by and let them keep secrets from us. Not this time._ ”

They were now in the central meeting room, the scene of the culling which had taken Jeremy’s younger brother from him. Cole had been deemed _useless_ by Clarke Griffin, which meant that his name hadn’t been on the list she’d made. How could someone pick and choose who lived and died?

Jeremy wasn’t going to let something like that happen. Not again.

“It’s a small room,” he said, looking out over the assembled, hopeful crowd. Too many of them weren’t even Arkers, the Grounders taking the beds that his people were supposed to have had.

He couldn’t change that past. But he could change the future.

“The rumors you’ve heard are true!” he said, raising his voice to be heard over the murmur of a thousand voices. “There is a way out of the bunker.”

Instantly, a relieved cheer met his proclamation, echoing off the stone walls that had trapped them for long enough. Jeremy smiled faintly, his eyes burning with the tears of his own relief.

“It will take a little bit of time to drill through the wall our hope lies behind,” he continued once the cheers had died down. “And so, until then, I ask that you stay patient just a little longer. But this is it, my friends. The time has come. We’re going home.”

 

***

 

A few hours later, Jeremy and his fellow mechanics had broken through the wall. As the jagged hole grew bigger and bigger, their worksite lit by battery lamps after the main power had cut out when the drilled past the tangled veins of wires running through the concrete, his hope grew.

 _We’re going home_.

It was a mantra inside his head, timed to every blow of his sledgehammer that widened their door to freedom.

Once the hole was big enough to fit through, Jeremy took one of the lamps and squeezed through into the darkness beyond. Water dripped somewhere in the distance, echoing off the cavernous, damp walls. The air smelled _alive_ in here – wet rock, mold, dust, and that particular muddy tang of Earth.

“Graham was right,” Hank said, pulling himself through the hole to stand by Jeremy. The beams of their flashlights reflected off of the tooth-like structures in the cave. “This is it!”

“Come on,” Jeremy said, moving forward into the darkness.

They wandered for what felt like days, marking their routes in chalk and twine. Jeremy’s heartbeat was a constant orchestra of hope pounding in his ears, enabling him to face the darkness as if it was the light of day. Because soon, any minute, he _would_ see daylight again.

But every path they took, every tunnel and cavern and rocky nook, came into a dead end.

“We don’t have the equipment to drill through stuff like this,” Hank said quietly, running his fingers along one of the cavern sides. His voice, once hopeful, was now blank. “Jeremy . . . please tell me we didn’t just . . .”

“No!” Jeremy yelled, kicking at a lump of rock. The flat of his foot ached with the force of the blow. “No, we must have missed something! We can go back and re-check, see if there’s–”

“We can’t,” Hank interjected soberly. His wan face looked even paler in the glow of their flashlights. “Praimfaya must have collapsed the cavern exits. We’re lucky the quakes didn’t affect the bunker.”

“Yeah,” Jeremy said, realizing that instead of giving his people freedom, he had given them death.

This time he was the killer.


	18. Fate Is Cruel

_6 years and 9 days after Praimfaya_

Bellamy didn’t remember leaving the rover.

One moment he watched in stunned horror as Clarke crumpled to the ground, and the next he was bent over her, gathering her up in his arms. At his touch, her eyes fluttered open for a moment, silver-tinted in the glare of the rover’s headlights.

“Bellamy . . .” she murmured, her words lost in the raging fury of the storm around them, but he knew the shape of his name on her lips.

“I’m here,” he said, holding her tight. “I’m here, Clarke. I’m here.”

Black blood coated his fingers, slick and warm.

No.

Clarke’s eyes slipped shut.

Oh, no.

Her head lolled back, her features going slack.

No, no, no, _please_ , no!

 

~ ~ ~

 

“Cover him!” Murphy snapped when Bellamy leapt out of the rover.

Wick and Raven lifted their guns at the ready, peering through the lashing rain of the storm. The deluge stung his face as the wind tossed the boiling-hot water in every direction. Oh, how he’d missed Earth!

“No, no, no,” the girl at the wheel chanted, her voice sliding up with panic. “No, she’s not dead. She’s _not_ dead.”

A bullet struck the side of the rover, just a few inches from Murphy’s head. This was an absolutely necessary moment, he thought, aiming at one of the blurry figures of the converging colonists and squeezed the trigger.

The dark figure fell, blending in with the muddy ground, but the bullets kept coming.

“Hurry up, Bellamy!” Murphy yelled.

 

~ ~ ~

 

This wasn’t happening.

Icarus sat curled against the back of the vehicle’s driver seat, his shoulder pressing into the wire frame behind the canvas material. He’d guessed what had happened when the lone shot rang out, and Bellamy hurtled out of the rover with a strangled cry.

He pulled his knees up and wrapped his arms around them, squeezing his eyes shut so tight that colors bloomed into existence behind his closed lids.

More shots rang out, spelling death for those of his people who were trying to stop them. It was as if he was the one pulling the triggers to end their lives, traded for those of the strangers.

The blood of his people was on his hands.

 

~ ~ ~

 

Clarke lay terribly still in Bellamy’s arms as he picked her up, a dark stain spreading across the material of her shirt. As he ran for the rover, his boots sliding in the muddy, steaming ground, he wished this was a dream. For even nightmares were something you could wake up from.

But this was reality – inescapable and terrible.

As soon as he was in the back of the rover, Clarke cradled against him in the dark, cramped space, Murphy leaned forward and slammed the doors shut.

“Go!” Raven shouted.

The rover tires spun wildly in the mud for a moment, bullets ricocheting off the sides of the vehicle with sharp, ringing _pings_ , before it lurched forward into the dark. They passed the bent gates, the shots of the colonists chasing feebly after them, and then they were out.

They’d made it . . . but at what cost?

 

 

_2 days on the ground_

Gavin had thought life would be easier when they were on the ground.

After generations of forced confinement in space, waiting for the Earth to be survivable and then taking the thirty-year trip from the original colony’s home back to the ground, he’d thought their trials were over. He’d thought that they could now focus on expanding their people, rather than keeping them small to conserve resources. He’d thought defense training would bow in order of importance to once-lesser courses like Earth Skills and History.

He was wrong.

Because they weren’t the last of humanity. There were others who had survived the end of the world, people just as devoted to protecting their own as he was . . . which made them dangerous. They were a threat, and he hadn’t been able to stop them from escaping.

“Do you know of any possible injuries or fatalities beyond Clarke?” the captain asked.

Gavin stood in front of the colony’s leader, Captain David Mikeson, at the start of his unhappy report. Water dripped from his wet hair and jumpsuit, rolling down his scorched features and forming small puddles on the metal floor. Outside, the horrific weather continued – steaming rain and electrical flashes; a truly devastating force. Most of their camp had been destroyed, in the brief moments of observation he’d had while going after the escapees.

“No, sir,” Gavin said, his words forced out from behind gritted teeth.

The worst part of his report was yet to come: the betrayal.

“ _Damn it_!” the captain growled, his features twisting in a rare show of emotion. He turned to the sputtering, flickering screens on the wall behind him. “Thanks to this storm, our systems are useless.” He pulled the comm device out of his ear, slapping it down on the desk holding the monitor’s control panels. “The interference is what let them get away, otherwise we’d have known sooner.”

And here was where the final part of Gavin’s report came in, and he knew the information would not be easy to say. Nor would it be taken easily, either.

The skin on the top of his hand prickled with the memory of the sleeping patch Icarus had administered; it was a good thing those patches never worked on him, always losing their effect within a few minutes.

“The interference wasn’t the only help the prisoners had,” he said.

 

 

_6 years and 9 days after Praimfaya_

“We need to stop the bleeding,” Bellamy said, laying Clarke down on the damp furs that covered the floor of the shaking, speeding rover.

His limbs trembled with both adrenaline and the looming terror of losing Clarke – again. His heartbeat thundered in his ears, louder than the rain pounding against the rover of the shrieking howl of the wind.

“If this is Clarke’s rover, she’d have a first-aid kit,” Raven shouted. She turned on a flashlight she’d found, shining the unsteady, pale beam onto Clarke, the light reflecting off of the inky sheen of blood. “Start looking, guys!”

“Here,” Emori said, handing over a bundle of what looked like worn shirts to Bellamy.

Bellamy took the bundle and shook it out frantically, taking a shirt and folding it over before pressing it against Clarke’s stomach.

The rest was a blur.

After several minutes of searching, they found a battered, twine-wrapped first-aid kit from which Echo pointed out a blood-clotting tonic. The storm only seemed to grow in strength and ferocity, water seeping in through the seals of the doors and, combined with the heat of so many bodies in such a small space, made the air in the rover thick and cloying.

There wasn’t anything else they could do for Clarke now, but hope in and pray to a forgiving God. Surely she had sacrificed enough, right? If anyone deserved another chance, it was her.

But Bellamy couldn’t find much hope to cling to, for fate was cruel here on Earth.


	19. Six Years

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigedasleng translation in end notes.

Madi felt like her thoughts had been turned off.

As soon as Clarke was in the rover, things seemed to shift and blur. Time passed in slow motion, the flash and boom of the raging storm worlds away. She knew she should be frightened, that every time she had to jerk the rover out of the way of falling branches or a suddenly-illuminated tree in a flare of lightning, she should have felt _something_.

But she didn’t.

Her hands were white-knuckled on the steering wheel, and she tasted her fear sharp and bitter in the back of her throat, but it was if all of that was happening to a different girl. Madi herself was fine.

Absolutely fine.

 

***

 

The storm was dying by the time the rover headlights illuminated the familiar, stacked-block houses of the village. The skies were still an angry, gray-yellow color, but the wind had drifted into a low mutter and the rain had cooled into a tepid drizzle.

Clarke was still silent, and the faces that met Madi’s glance in the rearview mirror were tense and worried. She felt the hazy pull of panic on her heartstrings, but it seemed almost lazy, like her body was merely going through the motions of distress.

Madi _was_ worried, she also couldn’t believe in a future without Clarke. Her guardian had always been there, and so she be fine. Anything else was impossible.

She stopped the rover at Beni’s house, a long, low-roofed structure made of scavenged metal and sod, the grass of his roof beaded with water. The once-Podakru healer was Clarke’s Second and the one who Madi looked up to almost as much as Clarke. He was tall and silent and strong, and as he stepped out at the sound of the rover’s engines, Madi felt the calm his presence always brought.

He would save Clarke, and everything would be fine.

It would.

“ _Chit’s gon daun_?” Beni asked, frowning at the sudden arrival. His pale eyes seemed to leap out of his sun-darkened features, even in the dim light of the retreating storm.

Madi couldn’t speak.

 _Clarke_ , she thought. _Clarke’s hurt and you need to fix her because I can’t._

She sat behind the wheel, her fingers still wrapped tightly around the damp, sticky leather. Her pulse throbbed in her fingertips, hot and racing. She tried to move her jaw, her lips, _anything_ , so she could speak.

It felt like minutes passed as she stayed there, frozen, but in reality it was only a moment.

Madi was saved the effort as Bellamy exited the back of the rover, Clarke’s limp body in his arms. Blood was dried in inky streaks across his hands, matching the stains on the bandages lumped over Clarke’s stomach.

Beni’s features contracted when he saw them, darting a glance at Madi in understanding and concern. A moment later, the two of them ducked into Beni’s house, swallowed up by the darkness inside.

And that’s when Madi thawed, her breath coming in strangled gulps. It as if someone invisible was bent over her, cold hands wrapped around her throat. Her vision burned and blurred with tears, hot rivulets rolling down her face.

Her door opened and someone was pulling her against them, strong, lithe arms wrapping around her.

“Hey. Hey there. Hey, hey, hey.” It was a woman speaking, her voice soft and foreign. “She’ll be all right. Clarke’s strong, and if anyone can pull through something like this, it’s her.”

Madi believed the woman, she really did. So why was she still crying and shaking?

 

~ ~ ~

 

Bellamy felt hollow.

As he followed the tall, pale-eyed man into the darkness of the grass-topped building, the only thing he felt was a desperate need to do whatever it took to save Clarke. If her salvation lay in slaying a thousand innocents, he would have done it without a moment of hesitation. He knew he should have been terrified by that resolve, but he wasn’t.

“Here,” the man said, gesturing at a wooden table set in the center of the building’s back room. He went to the cabinets on the wall to the left, opening them up and pulling bottles and clothes out with swift, decisive movements. “The blood thickener will have slowed the bleeding and chance of infection, but we must remove the bullet. How long has she been unconscious?”

Bellamy shook his head, his awareness of the time between their escape from the colonists and arrival here completely missing.

“A few hours?” he said, confused at how ridiculously calm his voice was.

“ _Skrish_ ,” the man muttered, turning away from the cabinets and setting the items he’d taken on the table next to Clarke’s head before pressing his fingers against the pulse fluttering too-fast in her pale neck. “ _Kigon yo gonplei, Klark; yu sontaim nou ste odon._ ” And then to Bellamy, he said. “You’re going to have to hold her down.”

 

~ ~ ~

 

Clarke woke up to pain lancing through her stomach in sharp, twisting flashes.

Her eyes snapped open as she screamed, the sound crawling out of her raw throat and ringing in her ears. She recognized the ceiling above her, the thick wooden poles supporting the earthen weight of Beni’s roof, which meant that she wasn’t in the strange ship anymore.

Memories flashed through her mind, tangled with the pain, images flicking by on fast-forward, too quick for her to truly see and understand them.

Until Bellamy’s face replaced her view of the ceiling, his dark curls plastered against his forehead and jaw. His features were shadowed and lean, sharpened by time, but his eyes were the same – warm and comforting.

She’d missed that gaze for six years.

“Bellamy?” Her voice was a whimper, catching on the sore edges of her throat.

Another bolt of pain came, replacing her relief. This time the agony radiated from a spot just a few inches above her left hip, and Clarke remembered the first sharp, surprised flash of pain when she’d been shot.

Her gaze flicked past Bellamy to Beni, who was bent over her torso, focused on digging the bullet out of her stomach. The hemostats in his hand slipped and twisted suddenly, sinking deep.

“I’m here, Clarke,” Bellamy said, his voice centering her through the consuming, nauseating pain. His fingers wound through hers, strong and solid, and she clung to him with the desperation of a drowning person. “I’m here.”

Beni cursed in frustration, and Clarke bit back another scream, though some sound still slipped past her clamped lips.

She wanted to curl away from the fiery, slicing ache that radiated from her stomach and coiled dark and suffocating around her thoughts. The only thing keeping her from slipping away into that painless black was the tight grip of Bellamy’s hand around hers. She didn’t want to leave him – not again, not ever.

And so, Clarke fought.

She struggled against the call of darkness, chasing after the pain and pulling it to her, keeping her in reality. She listened to Bellamy’s voice, begging her to stay with him, to keep fighting, that he was here and he wasn’t going anywhere.

She wanted to win against the darkness. But she was weak, and the dark grew stronger with her every effort against it.

Finally, it rushed her, and Clarke closed her eyes.

 

~ ~ ~

 

As Raven listened to Clarke’s anguished screams, she realized she’d heard them only a half a day ago on the Eligius ship. Their friend was the one who the colonist’s had been torturing. She’d been so close to them, and yet they hadn’t recognized the sound of her pain because they’d thought she was dead.

Maybe that belief would still be their reality.

The small girl who’d somehow managed to drive them safely through the storm was curled up against Raven’s side, her hands pressed firmly against her ears. But she still flinched with every scream that sounded from the back room, her limbs curled up tight.

Wick was on Raven’s other side, his fingers laced tightly through hers as they waited. It felt too easy just to sit here, and lazy, like there was _something_ they could be doing to help. But there wasn’t, and being useless was something Raven had never dealt well with.

Silence fell.

And then, finally, the pale-eyed man who Madi had called Beni stepped out from behind the hanging furs which separated the back room from the rest of the building, wiping his black-stained hands on an already blood-streaked cloth.

“I’ve done all that I can,” he said quietly. “Now, we wait.”

 

 

_2 years after Praimfaya_

Bellamy blocked the blow that Echo swung towards his throat, her elbow glancing off his forearm. At the same time, he brought his free arm curving up past her occupied defense. She twisted aside at the last moment, his knuckles skidding across her ribs instead of landing solidly in the soft, breath-stealing spot in the center of her torso.

When they’d first started sparring, their fights had been short and choppy, Echo coming out as the winner two out of three times. Now, it felt like a choreographed dance, each of them in tune to the other, able to guess and respond to attacks and defenses with ease.

They were alone in the large room their little group had converted into a training space, the sound of their breath and blows echoing off the scuffed metal walls. The lights flickered minutely overhead, a constant reminder that they were running on only seventy-five percent power, as Wick and Raven hadn’t been able to restore full capacity to the Ring. The cold air hissing out of the vents and prickling across Bellamy’s bare chest was another reminder, but the minimal heating didn’t bother him now, his blood singing hot through his veins.

He and Echo sparred daily for hours at a time, as the physical exercise kept the memories of what he’d left behind at bay. He had never given his reasons for needing these moments of nothing but the simplicity of sparring, and Echo hadn’t asked.

Bellamy stepped forward, his fists at the ready in front of his features, but Echo held up a hand.

“Enough, Bellamy,” she said, throwing her head back and taking a gulping breath. When she straightened, she wiped the sweat from her forehead and adjusted the thin tank-top she wore. “We’ve been here for almost two hours.”

He nodded in acceptance, though he still felt like he could fight longer. He always did. He _wanted_ more, since today had been especially hard, Clarke’s face haunting the edges of his vision.

She should have been here with them, and the fact that she wasn’t both strengthened and weakened him.

Echo must have seen the emotions swirling through him written across his features, because she lifted her chin and then sank once again into a defensive stance.

“No, you’re right,” Bellamy said, shaking his head. The weight of his memories weren’t hers to bear; he’d made it this far, and he could make it until they returned to the ground. “We’re done here today.”

“I’m not a fool, Bellamy.” Echo relaxed her posture, stepping forward. “I know why you fight so much and what you are running from. But, as someone once told me” – she smiled faintly, a little sadly – “the only way to lose your demons is to slay them.”

“What happens when they keep coming back, again and again, no matter how many times you’ve killed them?” he asked. He looked into her dark eyes, as if they held the answers he needed.

“You find someone to fight them with you,” Echo replied, her voice oddly soft.

Her gaze darted from his for a moment, down to his mouth. And suddenly Bellamy realized why she was always willing to spar with him, day after day. Why she had become a constant presence in odd moments, all those random conversations they’d had compiling into one, undeniable fact.

Echo loved him.

Almost as soon as Bellamy realized this, the fact both unexpected and perfectly logical, Echo kissed him. Her hands touched him softly now instead of attacking him, her fingers cool against the skin of his stomach and curling gently across his shoulders.

She wanted him to love her, too.

But when he realized that, even while her body was warm and tempting the thought of returning her desire escaped him, it seemed that Echo came to the same conclusion. She pulled away, her jaw tight. Understanding lurked behind the pain in her gaze, but disappointment ruled her expressions.

“I suppose I am a fool after all,” she said with quiet, bitter laugh as she stepped away. “I’ve been hunting a heart that was already captured a long time ago.”

Bellamy felt like he should apologize, the instinct coming somewhere deep in his bones. But he hadn’t done anything wrong unless a lack of reciprocation was a sin.

“ _Ai gaf yu bilaik shanen, Belomi_ ,” Echo murmured, lifting her gaze to his again. “ _Ai laik yu gona, en ai sonraun laik yu sonraun – no mou._ ”

And then her features cleared, the disappointment tucked away as she gave him that mocking little smile of hers, like nothing out of the ordinary had just happened. Like the silent, stoic warrior hadn’t just bared her heart to him.

 

 

_6 years and 10 days after Praimfaya_

When Bellamy thought he had lost Clarke the first time, he’d felt like his heart had shattered into a million pieces scattered and lost among the stars. The parts that remained belonged to his sister, and he hadn’t wanted to share that space with anyone, which had caused some tension between Echo and him a few years ago.

And then he’d learned that Clarke was alive and, slowly, the pieces of his heart that he thought irretrievable came rushing back, fitting together inside his chest in a tangle of hope . . . only to be shattered once more.

It was hours after Beni had removed the deceptively small bullet from and stitched up the hole in Clarke’s stomach, spreading the wound with a slimy salve that filled the room with the tangy scent of strange herbs.

“ _If she wakes, she will live,_ ” the pale-eyed man had told Bellamy.

Clarke had yet to wake up, her skin pale and clammy to the touch, her breaths shallow and her pulse weak and fluttering. Bellamy felt exhaustion creeping upon him, making his eyes heavy and turning his worried thoughts into half-awake nightmares.

He didn’t want to sleep, not until he knew Clarke would live, but eventually he couldn’t keep his eyes open any longer.

 

~ ~ ~

 

As awareness returned to Clarke, the first thing she knew was that Bellamy still held her hand.

A smile pulled at the corners of her weary mouth, as she felt the loose grip over her fingers. When she opened her eyes, she saw his head resting against the table next to her shoulder, his cheek pillowed on his arm. His dark curls fell across his eyes, and when she lifted her free hand to brush them aside, he stirred.

His eyes opened, relief springing to life in the dark of them.

“Hey,” Clarke murmured, her smile growing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beni: What's going on?
> 
> Beni: Shit. Keep fighting, Clarke; your story is not over.
> 
> Echo: I want you to be happy, Bellamy. I am your soldier - no more.


	20. Desperate Measures

_2 days after Praimfaya_

The bunker was at war.

After Octavia’s first people had woken up from the sleeping gas Kane and Jaha had detonated to stop the enraged panic before Praimfaya and realized only a little over a hundred of them had survived, there was instant animosity.

Skaikru blamed the Grounders for their losses, while the first clans responded that they had lost even more in the inferno of the second apocalypse. Fights broke out – between Skaikru and the first clans, between clans who had generations of feuding in their past – and Octavia and her patchwork security of trusted Guards and once-Trikru warriors barely kept the violence at bay.

Levels were claimed. Medical was flooded.

“This is a disaster,” Octavia growled, glaring at the chaos she saw on the screens in the command room. Indra and Kane stood next to her, wearing matching expressions of somber worry.

On Level Three, a gang of once-Azgeda clashed with a security patrol, the anger on their purposely-scarred faces obvious even from a security camera. Because the bunker security had sleeping darts in their guns, courtesy of Abby and Jackson, the gang was neutralized and disarmed quickly, but Octavia knew that their current tactics were a temporary solution.

“You won the conclave,” Indra replied, her voice quiet and measured. “The clans look to you, and they need to see a strong commander.”

 _But I’m not a commander_ , Octavia thought, her fingers tightening around the hilt of her sword. _I’m a warrior. So if these people want a fight, I’ll give them one_.

“Call a bunker-wide meeting,” she told Kane, a sharp, bitter smile dancing at the corners of her mouth.

 

***

 

Octavia stood behind the closed command room doors, and took a deep, steadying breath. In this moment, she understood why Clarke and Bellamy had made those hard choices in the past that she’d once hated them for.

The burden of leadership was not an easy weight to carry. But these were her people, which made them her responsibility.

“There’s still time to change my mind,” she said in dark humor.

“This is our only choice,” Kane replied quietly. “This is who we have to be to survive.”

“And if this doesn’t work?” Octavia asked, glancing up at him. “The few cannot stand against the many – even a fool knows that.”

“Then maybe we’re a step beyond foolishness,” Kane said with a soft, wry laugh.

“It’s called desperation,” Indra spoke up. “She earned her leadership by blood, and by blood she must keep it.”

“Right then.” Octavia squared her shoulders. “Here we go.”

 

~ ~ ~

 

The air in the large, crowded meeting room was thick with tension. Aggression swirled above the murmuring crowd, so heavy it seemed almost tangible.

Graham stood near the front of the meeting room, which meant he had to crane his head painfully back as Octavia Blake opened the command room doors and stepped out, flanked by the dark-skinned warrior woman who was a constant presence at her side, and once-Chancellor Marcus Kane.

“Our people would still be alive if that bitch hadn’t taken over,” Jeremy muttered from his position next to Graham. His eyes were bloodshot and his voice raw with grief, since his brother had been one of those in the culling.

“Shut up,” Graham hissed, shooting his coworker a warning glance.

He understood Jeremy’s grief. He understood his people’s anger. He understood why their people had been culled. He understood why the grounders were frustrated with his people’s callousness against their own losses. He understood the hard decisions that had to be made for survival, even if he knew he could never make them himself.

Graham understood everything, which was why he supported Octavia Blake’s leadership. She could have claimed the future for her people only, but she hadn’t. She’d given humanity the chance to ensure the future of their people, of their race.

From the ashes, they _would_ rise. They’d sacrificed too much for failure to be an option.

But instead of speaking, like Graham and he supposed the rest of the bunker’s inhabitants expected, Octavia continued down the stairs until she was on the same level as the crowd. Her blue eyes flashed across the assembled people, fierce and vivid behind the mask of black paint that crawled down her features in thick lines.

“If anyone thinks they’re a better leader than me,” she said, lifting her chin as her voice rang out over the murmurs and silencing them – “the council has agreed to accept the command of anyone who beats me.”

Jeremy shifted forward, and Graham shot a hand out, grabbing him by the arm.

“Don’t,” he snapped quietly, shaking his head.

“Why not?” Jeremy retorted, his jaw tight. “She let my brother die. She doesn’t deserv–”

“I’m not letting you do this,” Graham said. If Jeremy was killed – because Octavia _would_ beat him, no questions about that fact – the bunker would lose their top mechanic, and that was something that couldn’t happen. “You think you’re the only one who lost someone?”

“You didn’t,” Jeremy snapped, their argument drowned by the rising murmur of the crowd around them as they reacted to Octavia’s challenge.

He was right. Graham hadn’t known who his father was, and his mother had been floated for possession of illegal substances when he was three. He was put in the Ark orphanage until he was recruited by Sinclair when he was sixteen.

Family was a foreign concept to him, but he still missed the future he could have had.

Taking advantage of his hesitation, Jeremy tore away from Graham’s grip, shoving through the crowd towards Octavia.

“Jeremy, no!” Graham shouted, lunging after him.

After that, everything morphed into a loud, chaotic mass. Shouts broke out – against Octavia, against his people, against the grounders, against Praimfaya – as the crowd’s anger suddenly spiked into a crashed wave of violence. Somehow Graham managed to reach Jeremy, and he wrapped his arms around his waist, tackling his coworker to the ground.

“Get the hell off me!” Jeremy yelled, striking out.

His fist caught Graham in the stomach, stealing his breath in a painful gasp that caught hard in his throat. A knee collided with his head a moment later, and he knew that if they didn’t get against the wall, they were in danger of further injury.

“Skaikru deserves to die!” a grounder shouted, a chant rising in their language, echoing off the walls of the meeting room.

“My wife’s dead because of you!” someone retorted, similar accusations following.

“This is not . . . down . . . force . . .” Chancellor Kane’s voice cut through the noise in fits and starts.

Graham and Jeremy made it to a wall, where Jeremy curled up, wrapping his head in his hands. His shoulders shook, and he looked absolutely broken, but at least he wasn’t intent on a suicidal confrontation with Octavia Blake.

“You’ll be okay,” Graham said softly, catching his breath as he watched the rioting mass of people.

Oddly enough, it was in their anger that they were completely alike – Wonkru in their shared losses, even though the pain of those turned them against each other.

In a gap through the crowd, Graham saw Octavia facing against two members of the Arkadian guard, their jackets stripped from them for some reason or another; probably insubordination during those final panicked days before Praimfaya. When they attacked, they didn’t stand a chance. They were disabled within seconds, Octavia’s sword whipping into action in a blur of metal and blood.

He understood why she killed them – he really did. But if this was how things were solved, when did the violence end?

There had to be another way.

 

~ ~ ~

 

“This is madness,” Kane said, shaking his head.

Chaos had consumed the gathered survivors in the meeting room, knots of violence forming and spreading like a plague. Angry shouts echoed against the walls like waves, rising and falling.

In the middle of it was Octavia, her swords flashing as people came at her. She killed five – four Skaikru, one grounder – before the lights suddenly cut out.

Blackness consumed the bunker, thick and impenetrable. The anger of the crowd died, replaced by confused, surprised silence.

“What is this?” Indra asked, her voice small in the darkness.

Kane felt small himself, crushed by the pressing weight of the bunker walls. Without light, their salvation felt like a tomb, and panic stirred to instinctual life in the quiet, racing depths of his heart.

And then, another few long moments later, as sudden as it had come, the darkness lifted. The lights came back on, the brightness harsh and glaring.

 

~ ~ ~

 

After the lights came back on, it was like the emotions of the crowd had been erased and reset. They blinked at Octavia and her bloody swords with new eyes, as if confused at their actions before. The bodies of those who had foolishly decided to challenge her lay at her feet, their blood spreading in dark puddles around their crumpled limbs.

“Is this what you want?” she demanded of the stunned silence, gesturing with her blades at the fallen. “Is this the future you want for your people, for your children? Because this is what will happen if we don’t work together. The only way we’re going to make it is if we are truly one people – Wonkru. We survive _together_.”

Slowly, one by one, those of the first clans sank to their knees, acknowledging her leadership. Her first people were those who hesitated, until they bowed, too.

 

~ ~ ~

 

When Graham returned to the meeting room, the crowd had gone.

Octavia glanced up from where she was cleaning her swords with a dark rag. The crimson streaks on her weapons were the only sign of what she had done to hold her position. Her gaze met his, and before he had the chance to tell her what he’d done, he saw that she knew.

“You’re from Engineering, aren’t you?” she asked, returning her attention back to removing the blood from her metal blades.

Graham nodded, his hair brushing against his nose, and he swept it aside with an instinctive gesture.

“I see it worked,” he said, looking around the empty room.

“It was a good idea,” Octavia said. When he looked back at her, she was inspecting him curiously, like she hadn’t thought him of much importance until now. “You don’t hate me, do you?”

“No,” he said. “You’re doing the best you can in the situation we’re in, just like the rest of us.”

Octavia laughed skeptically, glancing away as she sheathed her swords once more.

“I hope so,” she said.


	21. All That Remains

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigedasleng translation in end notes.

_6 years and 11 days after Praimfaya_

Clarke would live.

After those long hours of horrible uncertainty and dread, Bellamy was able to breathe. She was here, she was alive, and everything felt perfect. It felt safe to hope again, like anything was possible now that Clarke was in his life again.

“ _Wamplei nou na hod yu op_ , _ai heda_ ,” Beni said, replacing the bandages over Clarke’s wound.

“ _Ai gonplei nou ste odon nowe_ ,” Clarke said dryly. A weary smile pulled at one corner of her mouth, but her eyes were bright with wry humor.

Thanks to Echo and Emori’s teachings, Bellamy was able to understand the short conversation. When he chuckled softly, she glanced over at him, her blue eyes still catching him off guard with how vivid and _alive_ they were.

She was really here.

Clarke moved to sit up, but Beni put a hand on her shoulder.

“ _Slou yu rou daun_.” He shook his head. “ _Yu laik ste kwelen. Yu get dison klin._ ”

“Damn it,” Clarke muttered, closing her eyes.

“Hey,” Bellamy said, laying his hand over hers, and her fingers curled up around his at the contact. “It could be worse, right?”

“She needs to stay still for at least another day,” Beni said, rolling up the old bandages. “After that, the _bliden hod klin_ will have done its work.”

He left them alone, and once again Bellamy didn’t know what to fill the silence with. When he thought Clarke was lost to him, everything he hadn’t said weighed on him, all of the could-haves and should-haves he’d missed. So why did he lose them now?

Oh, there was one thing he knew, but the six years that stretched between them were a barrier he wasn’t sure he could break past. Not yet.

“ _Ron yu op bida riden_ ,” he said, gently squeezing Clarke’s hand.

Her eyes were already drifting shut, her body’s instincts taking over her desire to see the rest of her friends. They’d already been told the good news of her survival, and they understood that the continuance of that rested in a good recovery.

Besides, they had time now. They weren’t going anywhere.

 

 

_3 days on the ground_

 

 

For the first time in his life, Icarus had woken up to the sound of happy, chattering voices. Before, it had always been the scheduled morning alarm that sounded ship-wide, unless he’d worked a night shift, in which it was the evening alarm that woke up.

He opened his eyes, savoring the lazy sensation of not needing to get up immediately. In this hazy moment of waking awareness, he forgot about the things he’d done to his people, the death’s he’d caused, and the certain warfare he’d brought about. He basked in the new sounds of the village they’d arrived at, voices echoing off the stone walls of the buildings and laughter ringing through the air.

So this was what Earth could be like.

“Rise and shine, sunshine,” a voice drawled above him, one of the Ring survivor’s features coming into view as the man looked down at him.

Icarus sat up, blinking rapidly. “Is there something we have to do?”

“Relax,” the man said, a smirk at the corners of his mouth. “This is our part of the world here, and we’ve got a day or two of relaxation ahead of us.”

The idea of hours, let alone _days_ without a task ahead of him was unimaginable. Icarus shook his head slowly, trying to comprehend.

“Leave the kid alone, Murphy.” That voice Icarus knew – Raven Reyes, the voice on the beacon he’d responded to. “Look, you’re scaring him.”

“I’m not scared,” Icarus contradicted, but then he saw the grin on her face.

“Yeah, he’s going to be fun,” Murphy drawled, leaving the room.

Yellow beams of dusty sunlight trickled in through the door, so different from the dull gray they’d arrived in. Raven’s eyes were bright as sat down next to Icarus and held a bowl out to him, steam wafting up, carrying an odd, savory scent to his nostrils.

“You did the right thing,” she said.

“I got some of my people killed,” he replied, swinging his feet out of the narrow cot he’d slept in before taking the bowl. “How is that the right thing?”

“Welcome to Earth.” Raven laughed bitterly, the sound heavy with memories. “It’s not going to be the rainbows and fun times you’ve been told it would be. I’ve lost more people on the ground than I ever did in space, when you think it would be the other way around.”

“In the second wave of radiation?” Icarus asked, cradling his hands around the warmth emanating from the sides of the wooden bowl.

“No.”

There was a moment of silence, in which he wondered what could have been worse than another apocalypse. The little he’d learned about the Ring survivors, it seemed that they had left people behind . . . but those people were still alive somehow. Between their arrival at the village, the long, tense wait to hear if Clarke would live or not, and then guided to this building here where he had fallen asleep almost as soon as he saw the cot, Icarus hadn’t seen many new faces.

“It’s not poison,” Raven finally said, nodding her chin at the bowl. “C’mon, you must be starving.”

He was hungry, but he hadn’t paid much attention to it. Rationing had been a part of his life, and Icarus hadn’t known a time where he’d eaten more than once a day. And he knew the stories of when people had had to eat once every other day in the first years of their journey to Earth, before the ship’s life support and food systems became fully established.

When the first, careful sip of the dark stew hit his tongue, Icarus almost groaned in ecstasy. The different flavors swirled through his mouth, foreign and intoxicating and utterly delicious.

Raven burst out laughing at his expression, but it was a happy sound. “It’s good, right?”

“It’s . . .” – Icarus shook his head, at a loss of words to correctly describe the sensation – “ _amazing_!”

“Come on.” Raven stood up stiffly, the metal components of the odd brace on her leg creaking faintly with the effort. “There’s more food outside – bread, fruit . . . the works.”

“Are you sure it’s okay?” he asked hesitantly. “I mean, technically I’m one of the people who thinks you’re dangerous, and–”

“Oh, we’re dangerous all right,” she agreed, her cheerful voice taking on a momentary dark edge. “But don’t worry. Everyone knows what you did, and you’re kind of a hero.”

 

 

_6 years and 11 days after Praimfaya_

 

 

_Well, you don’t know what we can find. Why don’t you come with me, little girl, on a magic carpet ride._

Madi sat on the hood of the rover, eating her breakfast stew and drumming her heels against the metal grill in time with the music rolling out through the open windows. The best thing she liked about the old world was its music, quickly memorizing the files stored on the drives Clarke had found in the rover’s front compartment.

The surviving Nightbloods were gathered in the main area of the village, where the two daily meals were shared. It was the same place that Clarke, Beni, and the other few older Nightbloods told stories of the world before Praimfaya.

Madi’s favorite story was the one when the village first started to be built five years ago. Clarke had found Beni and three others then, and together they began to build a home from the remains of the past. Even though she remembered that time, Madi still loved the way Clarke told it.

“ _Once upon a time, when the world was wounded, the magic brought those it had saved together, and they started to build a castle.”_

“Hey, I know this song.”

Madi looked up as Icarus followed Raven out of one of the stone buildings, one of the newer ones that she had helped build a year ago. The strange boy’s hair was soft and rumpled from sleep, and his eyes wide with wonder as he looked around the chattering Nightbloods as they ate.

“It’s not my favorite,” Madi said, grinning shyly at him. “But I still like it.”

She patted the hood of the rover next to her, inviting him to join her. He climbed up and sat down, his longer legs stretched out as he leaned back on his palms.

“Was this how it was before Praimfaya?” he asked her, stumbling a little over the last word.

“I don’t know,” Madi said, tipping her head back as she drank the rest of her stew. She set the empty bowl aside and wiped her mouth on the shoulder of her sleeve, talking around her mouthful as she continued, “I don’t remember a lot from before, only bits and pieces. Clarke says it’s like my memories were burned up in Praimfaya, which means that’s what happened.”

“All I know is space,” Icarus said, looking up at the blue expanse above them.

“Clarke was born in space, too,” Madi said. “Is it really as big as she says?”

“Yeah,” he said quietly. “It is. It’s bigger than anything you will ever know, which is why you feel so small. But then” – he laughed, and Madi realized that she liked that sound; hesitant and careful, like he was laughing for the first time – “standing outside of metal walls makes me feel small, too.”

“Well, everything makes me feel small because I am small,” Madi said matter-of-factly, which made Icarus laugh even more.

 

~ ~ ~

 

When Clarke woke up again, it was dark once more.

The pain in her stomach had lessened as the _bliden hod klin_ did its job, the plant that Beni had discovered containing miraculous healing properties, somehow urging the body to heal faster than normal. If she was careful, she would be back to new within a week.

Bellamy was asleep on a pile of furs that had obviously been brought in as a temporary bed, and after Clarke sat up – wincing a little at the sharp twinges that pulsed from her wound from the effort – she just looked at him, still marveling at the fact that he was finally, _finally_ here.

As if there was an alarm set deep in his bones, triggered by her movements, Bellamy opened his eyes.

“Don’t worry,” Clarke told him before he had a chance to protest against her upright position. “I’m okay. Still a little sore, and if I get in a fight I might ruin Beni’s hard work, but I’m good now.”

“You better be,” he said, sitting up and pushing his sleep-tangled hair out of his face.

She got to her feet then, mentally inspecting the state of her muscles and the level of pain from her wound. She wanted to stay and talk with Bellamy, to say everything she’d wanted to for six years, but that could wait. He wasn’t the only one that had mourned her.

As Clarke combed her hair back from her sticky features – she needed a bath, her clothes clinging to her fever-dirty skin – she heard the rustle of movement as Bellamy got to his feet. She glanced at him over her shoulder, their eyes meeting in a familiar tangle of comfort, understanding, relief, and now longing.

Bellamy stepped forward, pulling her against him. They hadn’t had the chance to just hold each other, thanks to the colonists shooting her, and Clarke idly cursed them for stealing that from them. But it didn’t matter now, because she’d survived . . . again.

And Bellamy was holding her, his arms around her like home, familiar and safe. His chin rested on her shoulder, and she let out the tension coiled deep inside her that she’d been holding for six long years.

“I missed you so much, princess,” Bellamy murmured, his voice soft and shaky with emotion. “I thought I’d lost you.”

“But you didn’t,” she said, tightening her hold around his waist and lacing her fingers together. “I’m right here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beni: Death cannot hold you, my leader.  
> Clarke: My fight is never over.  
> Beni: Slow down. You are still weak. You know this.
> 
> bliden hod klin = blood stopper (literal: blood stops)
> 
> Bellamy: Get some sleep.


	22. Home Sweet Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigedasleng translation in chapter for ease of reading, as one conversation is completely in the grounder language.

_6 years and 12 days after Praimfaya_

 

 

Monty was in heaven.

After six years of nothing but algae, powdered protein, and recycled water, he was finally eating real food again. The small village of Nightblood survivors had thrown together a sort of celebratory feast in honor of their arrival, and Clarke’s recovery of her almost-lethal injury.

There was a pig which had been roasted over the fire, the pink meat falling off the bones in tender, savory strips. Potatoes and greens were in wooden and metal bowls, steam rising from them in delicious, mouthwatering tendrils. There was this soft, creamy cheese which Monty had eaten that morning, spread thickly across wheaten bread, and more bread lumped beside it.

“Hallelujah, we are saved,” Murphy said reverently, coming to stand next to Monty by the food-covered table in one side of the village courtyard. Firelight flickered over the dishes, casting everything in a warm, homey glow. “Why isn’t everyone eating yet?”

“We’re waiting for Clarke,” Monty replied quietly, glancing again at the doorway where their long-lost friend was supposed to appear any moment. “Their healer came out a few minutes ago and said she was going to join us.”

“Well, she’d better hurry up,” Murphy remarked, stuffing a chunk of orange potato into his mouth, speaking around it as he continued. “It’s pure torture having to stand here with all this in front of me and not eat it.”

“Patience, John,” Emori said, coming up and slipping an arm around her partner’s waist. Her hair was loose around her face, and the sharp edges of her facial tattoo were soft in the fading light of the evening skies. “The food isn’t going anywhere.”

“Aww, you know me,” Murphy drawled, slinging an arm around Emori’s shoulders in casual, unconscious affection. “Patience isn’t really one of my virtues.”

“I know,” Emori replied with a teasing smirk. “And that’s why I love you.”

“Guys,” Monty said, coughing lightly to remind them of his presence.

“You can always leave,” Murphy told him dryly, his famous smirk pulling up one corner of his mouth.

There was a matching expression on Emori’s features, which made it easy to believe that the two were meant for each other. Even six years in space hadn’t torn the two apart, only driven them closer, and Monty felt a quiet, familiar ache in his chest. He’d had something like that once, and while Echo had drifted into his bed now and again on the Ring, it hadn’t been anything binding.

That was a good thing, right? Love was a weakness on the ground, and made life harder to survive in. Monty had learned that the hard way.

He was saved the trouble of an argument with Murphy and Emori by the appearance of Clarke, her features drawn slightly in pain, but she was still alive. She’d made it, just like them, fate giving all of them a much-deserved break.

As expected, Bellamy was at her side, and Monty smiled when he saw the missing happiness in his friend’s eyes. They’d all mourned Clarke, but her supposed death had hit Bellamy the hardest.

“Long time no see, Clarke,” Murphy said when the two of them walked up.

Monty didn’t hide his eye roll. Classic Murphy – always substituting sarcasm and dry, morbid humor for the softer feelings. The only one he was maybe a halfway decent person around was Emori, but then she was the exception to a lot when it came to John Murphy.

Clarke laughed, wincing a little when she did so, but her smile matched the bright joy in her eyes as she greeted the people she hadn’t seen for six years.

 

~ ~ ~

 

Echo still felt like an outsider looking in as she watched Clarke.

After the sun-haired woman had come out, it was like the small village brightened under her gaze. People sat in groups, heaping bowls of food in their laps, firelight glinting off their smiles as they chatted and laughed amongst each other. There weren’t many survivors on the surface, but there were enough to create this close-knit community.

And none were once-Azgeda as she, giving her a sense of loneliness even though Raven and Wick had coerced her into serving up with them.

“Hey.” That was Monty, his smile soft and sweet as he noticed her solitude. “You okay?”

Echo wasn’t sure what had prompted her to share some of her nights with the quiet boy. Oh, she knew a small part of it was that she couldn’t share those nights with Bellamy, the warrior who had first stolen her heart and yet who would never accept it. Maybe it was because Monty expected nothing from her, even though a bond had been formed through their intimacy. They knew they were just two lonely souls trying to escape from that loneliness together – nothing more.

“I’m fine,” she replied, and it was true.

Her belly was full with real food, the weight of it hot and comforting. She was no longer trapped by metal walls and black, star-filled skies. She had the ground firm and familiar under her feet and the stars were safely above her head. This was what she had dreamed of for six years, so why did it still feel like there was something missing?

“You can talk to someone else,” she told Monty after a few minutes had passed by.

“Maybe,” he said, shrugging. “But after having only a few people around you, all of this” – he gestured at the villagers – “feels like too much. But that’s how it’s always been for me, I guess; I’m not a big people person.”

Echo understood that. Maybe that was the reason she had enjoyed Monty’s company and comfort, since both of them had always been averse to the finer interactions of life. For while she had attended political gatherings now and then in her old-Earth days, she had always worked best with a sword or bow in her hands.

She knew battles, not people, not in the way most seemed to.

“The colonists will retaliate,” she said, her mind instinctively jumping to what she knew best – war. Even after the years of peace, her bones sang at the possibility of conflict, and the peaceful celebration of the village felt wrong. “We should prepare for that.”

“We will,” Monty said, scraping the last bits of food from his bowl before setting it aside and leaning back on his palms. “But we need a night like this, and you know it.”

Echo did know that, but that didn’t mean she had to like it. If there was an enemy, they needed to be on guard against them. Whoever these people had been before, they had changed. In a world without war, they could afford to be weak, but this was not a world like that.

“Where are you going?” Monty asked as she got to her feet, her limbs stretching happily with the proper balance of Earth.

“Into the shadows,” she said evasively, and then was true to her word, slipping into the darkness beyond the ring of firelight.

 

***

 

Echo saw the dark figure a moment before he intercepted her, stepping in front of her path.

It was the village healer, the once-Podakru man standing quietly, looking down at her with those strange pale eyes of his. It was a feature Echo had noticed all of the villagers had – silver glimmers in dark eyes, an even brighter sheen in lighter eyes. His hair was pulled into a loose knot at the nape of his neck, uncovering the edges of a tattoo that poked out from the collar of his loose shirt.

“ _Weron yu’s gon_?” he asked casually, but Echo knew his curiosity had a protective edge to it. She was still a stranger to him, even if Clarke had known her years ago.

“ _Ai nou yon baga_ ,” she said.

“ _Ai get em in_.”

Echo folded her arms. “ _Krei hakom yu kamp raun hir?_ ”

“ _Dison laik ai stegeda._ ” His voice took on a faint teasing note, which caught Echo off guard. _“Ai strech au hir, seintaim. Yu na komba kamp raun ai taim yu gaf._ ”

\----

 **Beni** : _Where you going?_

 **Echo** : _I’m not your enemy._

 **Beni** : _I know._

 **Echo** : _So why are you here?_

 **Beni** : _This is my village. I walk here, too. You can come with me if you want._

\----

Her surprise deepened at the invitation. While Echo wasn’t a people person when it came to socializing, she was excellent at reading them. He didn’t seem suspicious of her at all, instead finding a quiet humor in her wariness.

And so she went with him.

 

~ ~ ~

 

As the night had drifted on, dark and lazy, it took Raven’s worry with it.

The Eligius colonists were the problems of tomorrow; tonight, she was warm against Wick’s side, the two of them remaining by the fire as the rest of the village slowly dispersed to their homes until morning. The snap and crackle of the large, central bonfire as it died mingled with the quiet hum of insects and night life, a whispering wind blowing over the village and tickling the stray hairs on the back of her neck.

“I could get used to this,” Wick said quietly, his voice a low rumble against her ear. “I know there’s a lot we’ve come back to, like the ground has this thing against us being happy or something, but right now” – he sighed deeply in content – “it’s pretty damn perfect.”

“Home, sweet, home,” Raven agreed, lifting her head to press an invitational kiss against the stubbly underside of his jaw. “How long has it been?”

“Since what?” Wick asked, his brown eyes narrowing in wry confusion. “Since we were on the ground or since we . . . you know” – he wiggled his eyebrows – “were _on the ground_.”

“Ugh,” Raven huffed an annoyed laugh. “No, that’s not what I meant. I was thinking about being happy – really happy.”

“Oh, well,” Wick smirked, grinning at the glare she gave him. “See, in my head happiness is kinda relative, and – _ow!_ All right! Well, I really can’t remember, which is sad, but it always means there’s the opportunity to make new memories, right?”

“Sometimes I don’t know why I love you,” Raven drawled, though a smile still hovered unstoppable at the edges of her mouth.

Wick’s grin grew, and he pulled her closer, his fingers curling against her jaw as he kissed her.

“Does this mean I have to remind you?” he asked mischievously.

Raven stood up, Wick’s hand coming to her waist and steadying her involuntary wobble. Once she was readjusted to the denser gravity of Earth, she wouldn’t be so unsteady.

“I think so,” she said.


	23. Ai Hod Yu In

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title translation = I love you.

Once again, Bellamy found himself looking up at the stars after living among them.

As the night fell thick and dark, and the voice of the villagers filled the cooling air, he felt the years between his time on Earth slide away into the past like that time had become nothing more than a distant, weightless memory.

Clarke wasn’t lost to him – she was right here, laughing at a witticism of Murphy’s. His heart lightened at the sound, and he watched the joy crinkling at the edges of her eyes and mouth, lighting the blue of her fire-lit gaze.

He was home.

“So,” a young voice said, as someone settled down on the wooden bench next to him. “You’re Bellamy.”

He looked over and found the curious, gray-eyed inspection of the girl who’d driven the rover during those terrible hours after their escape from the colonists. Her braided brown hair was tucked under an oversized cap, and the skin around her mouth glistened with grease from the chunk of meat she held in one hand.

“That’s me,” he acknowledged with a faint smile.

“Clarke’s told me lots of stories about you,” the girl said, biting into the meat and talking around the mouthful, her words muffled. “I mean, she told me about the others, too, but she talked about you the most. She also radioed you every day, no matter what. Even when you didn’t reply. Did you hear her?”

Bellamy shook his head slowly as he glanced over at Clarke once more, their gazes meeting across the few feet of table and people that separated them. Emotion surged up into his throat, hot and choking.

Every day?

Clarke had radioed him every single day without fail. She’d been the static crackling overhead in the Ring, as regular as clockwork. She’d been alive, and he could have known.

Every day.

 

~ ~ ~

 

Bellamy stayed as the rest began to drift from the remnants of the celebratory feast back to their homes.

Raven and Wick lounged by the fire, while Clarke saw Murphy and Emori slip away, their intentions clear. Monty had been invited into the rover by Madi to listen to Jasper’s old music files, and the faint sounds of music filtered out into the quiet – strumming guitars and crooning voices.

Clarke knew that the Eligius colonists were a problem that couldn’t be ignored, but she also knew that they could wait until tomorrow. Beni had left the feast early to set a watch around the village, so there wasn’t the chance of any surprises.

She glanced over at Bellamy, taking in his familiar features once more. He was looking up at the sky, his hands loose in the pockets of his old Guard jacket that she’d kept for him in the hope of his return. When she’d given it to him that morning, her wound healed enough to allow for movement, his smile had been incredulous.

“ _I thought I’d never see this thing again_ ,” he’d said, slipping his arms into the worn blue material. The jacket had still been slightly too-big, which meant that it was perfect. “ _I wonder if the Guard made it through O’s reign.”_

 _“This maybe been the jacket of a Guard once,”_ Clarke had replied, reaching up to fix the collar where it had been crumpled under against his neck. Her fingers had felt electric against the warmth of his neck, the tension between them almost tangible. “ _But I always saw it as yours – nothing more. Plus, it gets pretty cold here at night now; you’re going to want something warm.”_

Beni had come in after that to change the bandages across her stomach. She could have done it herself, but her Second insisted on making sure she was healing properly himself.

Now, Bellamy turned his gaze from the stars to hers, and Clarke’s heart pulsed sure and steady with the love she felt for him. She’d loved him for longer than she’d realized, and then even longer without him in the six years apart.

So why couldn’t she tell him?

“Madi told me about your stories,” Bellamy said, a quiet smile pulling at one corner of his mouth. “And how you radioed every day.” His features darkened, the warmth in his gaze clouding over. “Clarke, if we–”

“Don’t,” she said, shaking her head. “We can’t change the past, Bellamy; we can only live for the future.”

He nodded, but she saw the weight of his past griefs in the tightness of his jaw and the tears glittering unshed in his eyes. Clarke had tried to imagine what it would be if she’d thought he was dead, but she hadn’t been able to because a world without Bellamy Blake was one she didn’t want to think about.

She had missed him for six years, but he’d mourned her.

Clarke stepped forward and wound her fingers through his, and holding tight. He closed his eyes and returned her grip, the warmth of his hand steadying around hers.

 

~ ~ ~

 

The chill of the night was suddenly erased by the quiet heat of Clarke’s hand in his.

Bellamy closed his eyes, her grip centering him in this moment right here. If this was all that ever happened, it would be enough. He thought of Clarke in all the ways she’d ever anchored him, the two of them facing the impossible side by side. Desire was an afterthought, because she was so much more to him than simple, animalistic wants.

He wondered what would happen now – an idle curiosity. In the two nights since she’d been bedridden from her wound in Beni’s infirmary, he hadn’t left her side . . . but she wasn’t that weak now.

 

~ ~ ~

 

A few minutes later, Clarke felt exhaustion weighing heavy in her bones. While she’d survived her wound, it still was taking its toll on her, even with the healing help of the _bliden hod klin_ which had enabled her to leave her bedrest after a day. And as she began the short path from the village center to the building she and Madi called home – though the girl rarely slept inside, preferring the rover instead – she kept her fingers laced through Bellamy’s.

They’d missed too many moments in the past. She wasn’t letting another one slip away.

Inside the dark warmth of her home, Clarke lit the lamp just inside the doorway, the orange flame casting dancing shadows across the meager furnishings of the two-room building.

The first room was part kitchen, part workshop, with gun and radio parts scattered across a table set against one wall, and the remnants of a fire sitting cold and black in the hearth opposite. A mural stretched in charcoal shades of gray and black across the longest wall, shadowed sketches of landmarks of before drawn across the uneven cement blocks – their old dropship camp with the slapdash wall, TonDC with the crumbling statue of President Lincoln, Arkadia with the tall ring of Alpha station curving over it, and the once-tall tower of Polis.

“I didn’t want them to be forgotten,” she said, watching as Bellamy’s eyes widened in wonder and memory when he saw the mural.

“Remember when things were as simple as us against the grounders?” he asked wryly, lightly tracing the lines of the dropship camp wall. He shook his head. “Man, was I ever a pain in the ass back then.”

“Yes, but you were our pain in the ass,” Clarke replied, smiling when he flicked his gaze over to her. “The ground changed all of us.”

A long moment passed, in which their gazes tangled together and locked tight. Those three little innocent words that held so much weight rose once again to the tip of Clarke’s tongue, and she didn’t stop to wonder if this was the right moment, because maybe there weren’t any right moments on the ground, only moments.

Like this one right here.

But in the space between her thoughts and the decision to speak them, Bellamy stepped forward.

 

~ ~ ~

 

Bellamy had never been one for words; his feelings had always been better expressed in actions.

Like when he wanted to tell Clarke just how much he loved her, and had wanted to say it so many times before, he just couldn’t find the words to express the depth of his feelings. Anything he thought of felt cheap or too small. He knew why she’d kept her hand in his as she took him into her home, and he knew the expression glimmering in her gaze as her lips began to part.

He didn’t want to miss a single moment with her, but he also didn’t want to stand forever in this odd, awkward battle of glances and almost-confessions. They’d had enough of those in their past.

And so he stepped forward, slid his palms along the smooth curve of her jaws, and kissed her.

It was a slow kiss, soft and careful. She tipped her chin up and he dipped his fingers into the soft hair along the nape of her neck, the strands fine and silky to the touch. He tilted his head and she curled her hands around his upper arms, her grip light and hesitant.

And then, as if by the simple touch of their mouths a fire had been lit, the kiss shifted from a gentle hello into something more. There was now an urgency to their quickening motions, Clarke’s fingers sliding up his arms and tangling into his hair as her mouth slanted desperately across his.

They clung to each other, pressing closer and closer, even though there was hardly any space between them.

 

~ ~ ~

 

Clarke wasn’t aware of the short trip from the front room into the back of the building, only that the flickering shadows of the lamp shifted into the soft dark of her bedroom. Everything else she knew was Bellamy – his hands on her waist, now sliding up to her shoulders; his mouth bringing delicious heat across her own, and then pressing against the soft hollow of her neck.

When she fell back in slow motion on the furs of her bed, Bellamy’s arm around her shoulders, Clarke gasped in pain. Her wound twinged annoyingly – not a terrible kind of agony, but enough so it wasn’t easy to ignore – and Bellamy suddenly lifted his head.

“I’m fine,” Clarke said, her fingers tugging on the front of his shirt. He’d lost his jacket somewhere along the way from the front room to the bed. “Just . . .” – she leaned up, pushing the pain aside as she pressed a long, lingering kiss to the side of his neck, his pulse leaping under her touch – “don’t stop.”

And so he didn’t.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, that's what I mean by steamy fluff. It's fluffy and sweet but also a bit steamy without delving into smut AKA my romantic writing specialty and preference. But chapter 25 does slip a little more into the steamy side of things, FYI . . . *smirks*


	24. Doomsday

_6 years and 9 days after Praimfaya_

 They were doomed.

Behind the walls of her room, Octavia didn’t have to wear the mask of leadership. She could rage or weep in secret, and no one would know but the gray concrete barrier between her true emotions and the ones she showed to the world. This small space was her sanctuary, and in the six years underground, she hadn’t let anyone into it – not even Indra.

Octavia sat on the edge of her narrow, metal-framed bed, her mind blank as she sharpened her sword with practiced ease. The soothing rasp of stone-on-steel smoothed the edges of her tangled, whirling thoughts . . . but only for a moment.

She couldn’t hide from their fate.

Jeremy had let them go from the council room a few hours ago, the action and the crushed expression of defeat on his features proving that his actions had been unsuccessful.

“ _Does anyone else know you’ve killed us all?_ ” Jaha had asked the rebel mechanic.

“ _No_ ,” Jeremy had said, his voice small. “ _Not yet._ ”

Octavia saw the horror of his actions haunting the man in his crumpled posture and weary voice. He was a false savior, dooming his people instead of rescuing them. He’d given them hope only to smash it. The guilt he must certainly feel would keep him silent far longer than any logical reason ever would.

“ _Good_ ,” Jaha had said, turning his quiet fury off almost as quickly as it had arisen. “ _Make sure it stays that way._ ”

But secrecy was a plan built for failure, and everyone knew it. The people would stay patient only so long if they continued in the belief that there was a way back to the ground, and drilling time excuses would stave off suspicion for a day at most.

Chaos _would_ fall, and they had to be ready for it when it came.

Octavia slammed her blade back into the sheath across her back, tossing the sharpening stone onto the thin mattress behind her. Her jaw clenched in mingled fury and ruined hope as the weight of their situation lowered onto her shoulders once more.

A knock pulled Octavia from her dark thoughts, and she got to her feet. Graham looked up from the datapad he held in one hand when she opened the door, his green eyes meeting hers through the tangle of his ever-messy hair.

The quiet engineer had drifted in and out of Octavia’s awareness during Wonkru’s time in the bunker, and every encounter she’d had with him brought a surprise. Like when his momentary shutdown of all bunker power had been the turning point in the riots during those first days after Praimfaya. Or in the meeting a few months later when he’d defended her against Jaha, who’d been quietly lobbying for a second chance at being Chancellor.

“Please tell me you’re here with some good news,” Octavia said, a random wisp of curiosity brushing through her as she wondered why he was here with obvious information instead of calling for a council meeting.

“I wish I was,” Graham replied somberly, reaching up with his free hand to brush his hair out of his eyes. “I asked Kane to gather the council for a briefing, but I thought you should know first.”

Again, Octavia was surprised by Graham’s actions. But the fact that he thought she needed to know whatever information he’d discovered first also sent a churning twist of dread into her stomach. They’d already been given a death sentence by Jeremy’s destruction of their life support systems – what was worse than that?

“As soon as I got back to engineering,” Graham said, glancing down at his datapad and scrolling through the illegible information on it that somehow he was able to comprehend, “I did a damage report and ran simulations based on our current system levels. And, well” – he inhaled sharply, glancing up at her – “the statistics aren’t good . . . at all.”

And suddenly, Octavia realized why he’d wanted to tell her first. She closed her eyes momentarily under the fresh weight, her quiet fury against Jeremy’s recklessness spiking and curling her fingers into fists. It had been years since she’d killed anyone, and that had been a good thing, but maybe today she’d break her non-violent streak.

“How long do we have?” she asked softly, her voice oddly calm despite the anger whirling hot in her veins, threatening to cloud her thoughts.

“Well, everything is still running – granted, on average about forty percent power system-wide – but it’s on backup power, and the batteries and generators for that weren’t designed to last for very long. We could try to fix everything, but the time for that versus the time we have means–”

Octavia snapped her eyes open, causing Graham to stop his panicked, hopeful evasion of the question.

“How long?” she repeated, and this time some of the anger slipped into her voice.

Graham swallowed, and she saw just how much he wished his next words weren’t true.

“Two weeks,” he said.

 

~ ~ ~

 

Two weeks.

Graham saw the horrible reality of his announcement settle onto the features of the council members, and once again the wish for this to all be something he could pinch himself awake from surged through him. But he’d learned that dreams were always nicer than his reality, which meant that this nightmare was inescapable.

The emergency lights were still on, and they’d be the only source of electrical lighting in the bunker until the power completely died. The first thing to go would be the plumbing systems in a few days, the power from that diverting to the remaining systems to save on battery life. Next would be the automatic doors and locks, staying open per safety protocols. And then the bigger systems would start to fail, beginning with the hydroponics and water pumps.

Graham knew the bunker systems inside and out, which was why he felt like he should know a way to fix this . . . only he didn’t.

“There must be something we can do,” Kane finally said, his resolute hope breaking the silence. He looked over at Graham, his gaze challenging him to share in that same, impenetrable hope. “We can form teams to explore every part of the caves; maybe there was a part Jeremy and his people missed. We can manually switch to minimum power to conserve battery life, giving us more time to repair the systems. We can–”

“Do we have any chance of drilling through the cave walls?” Octavia interrupted him, directing her question to Graham.

In the past few days, Graham had felt like everyone’s attention was on him. Like he was a leader instead of just an engineer. He wished he had the answers to all the questions he got, but he didn’t, and he _hated_ the feeling of uselessness it gave him.

“We have no idea how thick those walls are or how much possible surface damage is above their original structure,” Jaha replied in the time Graham had taken to think. “We could build explosives to detonate through the walls, but without a blueprint of where to try to break through” – he shrugged – “we’re trapped.”

“No!” Kane slammed his palms hard on the wooden desk of the council room. “No, this can’t be happening. Not again. We thought we were doomed on the Ark, but we made it to the ground. There _has_ to be another way – there has to!”

“I can run some more simulations and double-check our options,” Graham offered.

“Enough.” Octavia stood up, her voice cracking through the tension rising between Kane and Jaha. “I’m not going to sit and let what little time we have waste away. We don’t know what the future has for us until we’re in it, and we have two weeks until that.”

“If you have a solution to all of this, then, please” – Jaha spread his hands invitingly, a dry smile pulling at the corners of his mouth – “enlighten us.”

“We have twelve hundred people inside this bunker,” Octavia said. “That’s twelve hundred lives at risk . . . but also twelve hundred workers. We might be in our last weeks of life, but I’m not giving up without a fight.”

 

~ ~ ~

 

Marcus met Abby in their room as soon as the council meeting was finished.

The tension in the bunker had been steadily rising and thickening as time passed without solid word from Jeremy’s rebellion as to whether or not the way home was ready. Rumors circulated, worry spiked, and hope soured with every silent minute that ticked by.

“And?” Abby asked as Marcus shut the door behind him.

He stepped forward and took her face in his hands, tipping his forehead against hers. Her heartbeat quickened with his actions – not with desire, but with fear. This wasn’t a happy Marcus embracing her; it was a scared man holding onto the person he loved for strength in desperate times.

“Marcus, what’s going on?” she asked, her voice trembling. “It didn’t work, did it?”

“No,” he murmured, the word dragged out of his throat. “Octavia is calling a bunker-wide meeting in a few hours to give the news.”

Abby squeezed her eyes shut around the tears burning and blurring in her vision, a sob catching in her throat. She clung to Marcus as the weight of their future crashed onto her, dark and heavy.

No. After everything they’d done, everything they’d sacrificed to make it this far, it couldn’t end like this. It _couldn’t_.

“No,” she said, pulling away and wiping at her eyes. “No, there has to be something to stop this, something we can do. _Something_.”

Even after a year had passed when Clarke should have been able to contact them again, there’d been only radio silence, but Abby hadn’t given up hope. But now . . . she would never see her daughter again. She refused to think about the possibility that the eight left on Becca’s island hadn’t been able to make it to space. They _were_ alive.

And in two weeks, they’d be the last of the human race.


	25. Confessions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Absolutely nothing but steamy fluff here - you're welcome.

_6 years and 13 days after Praimfaya_

Clarke woke up with the warmth of Bellamy’s arms around her.

She kept her eyes shut, a smile pulling gently at the corners of her mouth as she basked in the sensation of being held by the man she loved. Last night had been a blur of tangled limbs, pounding hearts, and frantic kisses that still didn’t seem real, though the memory of it was burned across her skin. This right now felt real.

A few minutes later, Bellamy shifted his hold on her, his fingers curling around the soft curve of her hip. She propped her head up on an elbow and watched as he woke up, his eyes fluttering open behind the tangled curls of his hair.

“Hello,” Clarke murmured, brushing the hair away from his eyes before leaning down to press a soft, lingering kiss against his unsuspecting lips.

He smiled under her mouth, his hand sliding up from her hip along her back, his fingers creating a delicious trail of subtle friction against her skin. More memories of last night leapt into Clarke’s mind at his touch – Bellamy’s hands around her shoulders, stroking along her thighs, and tugging her hips against his.

“Morning, princess,” Bellamy said, his voice rough with sleep.

 

~ ~ ~

 

If this was a dream, Bellamy didn’t want to wake up.

Clarke was warm and soft against him, and he never wanted to let her go. He felt like everything had finally fallen into place the way it was supposed to be. His heart was so full of love it felt like it would burst, and yet somehow it kept beating, letting him stay in this moment with Clarke.

Last night, he’d let his actions speak the words that he hadn’t been able to say. But now, no barriers between them, he knew this was the time.

He pulled far enough away from Clarke so he could look her straight in the eyes, the silver-touched blue of her gaze soft in the graying dark of the early morning light trickling in through the narrow window above their heads. He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, enamored by the way she closed her eyes at his touch, her lips parting slightly.

“I love you,” he whispered, the words falling so easily off his tongue. Clarke’s eyes flew open, her breath gusting out in a quiet exhalation that he felt against his mouth as he kissed her. “I love you so damn much, Clarke Griffin.”

“I know,” she said, her fingers sliding warm up his jaws and tangling in his hair.

“You did, huh?” he teased, laughing softly between kisses.

“You wear your heart on your sleeve, Bellamy Blake,” Clarke said, slinging a leg across his stomach and shifting over him. “And that’s why I love you.”

When she kissed him again, her hair brushing over his cheeks and her lips slow and certain against his, Bellamy felt complete.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is where I have taken a little hiatus from writing this to organize my thoughts and get the next half fully plotted and the final chapters drafted. I consider this a "halfway break" like they have in the airing of the show, but I'm going to try and get new chapters posted soon.
> 
> Any and all comments and kudos are deeply appreciated on this story, so please let me know what you think of this fic!!

**Author's Note:**

> I'm halfway done writing this, so don't hold your breath for new chapters. I write a lot of different fanfics (and some original works) at the same time, so updates are super sporadic and I write whatever whenever inspiration for it hits me.
> 
> Comments and kudos highly appreciated! I write for myself to pass the time in hiatus, but any love and thoughts about my fics are always nice to get =)


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